


The Way

by jsnoopy



Series: The Buried Youth [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Blood and Violence, Eventual Romance, Friendship, M/M, Magic, Multi, Murder, Murder Mystery, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:17:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 75,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsnoopy/pseuds/jsnoopy
Summary: Looking back, there was no real way he could have known what was ahead of him, how he’d already stepped off the edge, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the fall.





	1. pt. i

**Author's Note:**

> this is a Big Idea stemming from mine and my roommate's brains and i hope i will do it justice
> 
> i will add tags as it continues, because i don't want to spoil things too far in advance, but i also don't want to take people too much by surprise so i will say right here that main plot elements include violence and murder, but i don't foresee either being very graphic
> 
> the romance is very minimal and leans more towards intense friendship, but again i will update the tags if that changes
> 
> i posted this once and left it up overnight but then i got nervous and took it down! this is not edited!

Looking up at the building looming over him, Donghyuck felt like he was going to be sick.

It was almost castle-like, the way the turrets stuck out into the sky, covering the sun so that the whole face of the building cast a long, wide shadow over the lawn, including Donghyuck himself.

The photos on the website hadn’t looked nearly this daunting.

Donghyuck hefted his duffel bag higher on his shoulder and took a deep breath before starting up the wide stone steps that led to the double front doors. They had been propped open for move-in day and it was easy to see why. They looked heavy.

The entrance to the school was as grand as he’d expected it to be, with the price tag that accompanied admission. Luckily, he’d been able to bypass the full cost himself, but the glossy marble floors made him break out into a sweat.

Donghyuck wiped his forehead with his palm then his palm on his pants. He hadn’t changed into the uniform yet, so he wasn’t worried about dirtying his clothes -- he’d had these jeans for at least three years, and while the waist still fit comfortably, thanks to being a pudgy kid and a lean teenager, he’d had to cuff them so that they would look purposefully too short and not hilariously so.

No mistake, it wasn’t like his family couldn’t afford clothes the same way they couldn’t afford this school. But Donghyuck had developed a little bit of a thrifty streak, as well as fondness from the oddities in his own personal fashion.

“Can I help you?”

Donghyuck turned to his right, a smile automatic at the sight of the older person questioning him. 

The man didn’t look much older than him, tall and lean with an open blazer revealing a white collared shirt, the top two buttons undone. He quirked a brow at Donghyuck as he waited for an answer, lowering the clipboard in his hands.

“Um. I’m okay, thanks,” Donghyuck said, “can you direct me to wherever I need to go to check in?”

Both eyebrows were raised. “Check in?”

“For...housing or registration or…” Donghyuck murmured, trailing off.

“Oh, you’re a student,” the man said. He looked like he was trying hard not to look surprised.

Donghyuck wiped sweat from his face again, waiting for the man to tell him where to go while struggling to maintain his polite smile.

“I can tell you your room assignment,” the man said holding one hand out to him. “Sorry. My name is Sicheng, I lead the theater classes.”

“Hi,” Donghyuck said, shaking his hand as quickly as possible. The brief interaction made him feel cold all over. One minute in and a teacher had already decided he looked like he didn’t belong here.

“Name?” Sicheng said, holding up his clipboard again.

Donghyuck told him, looking down at his worn, comfortable shoes next to the teacher’s dark, polished ones.

“Ah, here it is,” Sicheng said. “Have you visited Norton before?”

Donghyuck shook his head. The English countryside school was a long way from home.

“No problem, I’ll find someone who can help you find the dormitories,” Sicheng said, although it sounded like it was more of a problem than not, as he started looking up and down the halls, his brows creased as he sought someone to help him.

“I’m sure I can find it--” Donghyuck started.

“Yuta!”

Donghyuck sighed and swallowed the rest of his words. A passing man, presumably another teacher judging by his age and how he was dressed, stopped a few yards away. 

He wore a well fitted suit, his shirt buttoned all the way to his throat, but no tie. His blond hair was long, but pushed back from his face in a professional style.

“Can you show this new student the way to his dorm?” Sicheng didn’t wait for an answer, already heading past Donghyuck to the arriving freshman who had begun to gather outside on the steps, some looking nearly as awestruck as Donghyuck felt. 

Donghyuck followed the other teacher nervously down the halls of Norton Academy. Each hallway looked nearly identical to the last, with high vaulted ceilings and intricate masonry. Display cases of trophies lined the walls, along with framed photographs of classes spanning hundreds of years back.

The teacher, Mr. Nakamoto, tried to explain some of the areas they passed by, especially ones Donghyuck would visit, like the dining hall and the nurse’s office, but they quickly blurred together, each left and right turn, every staircase making Donghyuck dizzy with everything he needed to remember.

“I’m sure your orientation leaders will be much more helpful,” Mr. Nakamoto said, apologetic, as he led Donghyuck across the expansive lawn to one of the dormitories. All of them looked exactly the same as well, apart from the names which were inscribed on plaques just outside the door. He would have to remember his was the second to last on the left, a large garden stretching between the manor-esque buildings.

“Thank you anyway,” Donghyuck said, wholeheartedly meaning it. “I never would have been able to find it.”

Mr. Nakamoto smiled and stepped back. “I suppose I will see you in class, Donghyuck. I hope you settle in well.”

“Thanks,” Dongnhyuck said again. He felt a bit silly waving but did it anyway before he turned to go inside, a knot forming in his stomach now that he faced his next task: meeting his roommate.

It did not take long to come to the conclusion that Donghyuck and his roommate were not going to be friends. 

It wasn’t like the guy was horrible. He was just way too fancy for Donghyuck to be comfortable. Fancy wasn’t the word that anyone else at the school would use, he already knew that. There was only one person he knew to ask and there wasn’t anyway for Donghyuck to be confident enough to ask him what the word was for a pretentious looking teenager. 

He hadn’t changed into his uniform either yet, which would be relieving except for how he was wearing a blazer. A casual blazer. Maybe Donghyuck was in over his head.

“What did you say your name was?” Hendery asked without looking up from his phone.

Donghyuck should be similarly glued to his own, considering the restriction from personal laptops or cellphones during the week, starting Sunday night and lasting until Friday at 2 pm, when the school day ended. But he’d already called his mother when he arrived. It was a short call before his phone died. After what was said, he wasn’t in the mood to dig his charger out of his bag in order to receive countless game app notifications.

“Oh, right, nice,” Hendery said.

“I didn’t say anything yet,” Donghyuck said.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s nice here,” Hendery said. He lifted his eyes from his screen, his expression falling into interest for the first time since Donghyuck stepped into their, admittedly large, room. “Why are you starting school here now instead of coming in first year?”

“It wasn’t an option,” Donghyuck said. It was the truth. He hadn’t thought he could escape the constricting walls of his small town school, or get out from under the weight of the eyes of the people and classmates he’d known since he was in pre-school.

“Oh. I always knew I was going to attend Norton.”

“Cool,” Donghyuck said, as Hendery returned his attention to his phone, effectively giving up the interaction.

Although they wouldn’t become best friends, Hendery displayed a surprising show of kindness when he invited Donghyuck to sit with him and his friends at dinner. Truthfully, it was tempting to say no and hide in his room for the rest of the night, but he wouldn’t have been able to lie his way out of it when his stomach had been audibly growling since he moved in. Also, he wasn’t in the position to be turning away social connections. Maybe Hendery’s friends wouldn’t be as aggressively wealthy and cold as him.

Xiaojun was intimidating in his own way, with his neatly groomed hair and carefully perfect posture, but Yangyang was a breath of familiarity among the stiff, baby-businessmen that Donghyuck had had to deal with all day.

That was when he saw them for the first time.

They sat at the table closest to the rain streaked window. Six boys, backs turned out to the dining hall, closing their own world off from the one around them.

Two were hunched over in a way that was probably meant to be inconspicuous but only brought more attention to them -- Donghyuck could see the glowing phone screen tucked under the table from across the Hall.

Donghyuck could only see one of their faces in detail, because the boy next to him had leaned over to whisper something in another friend’s ear. 

He wore a calm expression, but the tilt of his head told stories about the years of experience he had in observation. He smiled at the same time as two of the others erupted into loud laughter -- just a small crack in his serious exterior, but it was enough to pique Donghyuck’s curiosity further. As he watched, the boy took his round lens glasses off and laid them on the table, still smiling as he rubbed his eyes with two knuckles.

“Are you staring at Mark Lee?”

Donghyuck banged his knee on the underside of the table as he jumped, startled by the sudden voice speaking directly into his ear. He grunted and rubbed his knee with both hands, turning to look at his assailant.

Yangyang smiled back at him, a mere three inches from his face.

“Relax,” Yangyang said, “he’s pretty cool.”

“Please,” Xiaojun said, “they would eat him alive.”

“Who would really mind being eaten alive by them, be honest?”

Donghyuck’s dignity had already been lost for the night. “Who are they?”

The legs of Yangyang’s chair screeched loudly over the floor as he scooted closer to Donghyuck. “They’re...they don’t have a squad name, really.”

“‘Squad,’” Xiaoqun muttered.

“They’re just...them,” Yangyang continued, “the one you were eyeballing is Mark Lee. He’s in his last year.”

Donghyuck chanced a peek back over to the table. The boy who had leaned out of the way was sitting up straight again, obscuring his view of Mark Lee, but was also staring right back at him.

“Oh. Shit,” Donghyuck mumbled, suppressing the urge to sink down into his chair. “Is he looking at me?”

“Oh my god. You’re full of yourself,” Xiaojun said, but Yangyang grabbed Haehan’s arm under the table, squeezing it tightly.

“Oh my god,” Yangyang breathed, “oh, you’re dead, Donghyuck, I’m so sorry.”

Hendery laughed. The situation was growing more horrific by the second. “Alright, Jaemin isn’t that terrible.”

“He’s totally terrible,” Xiaojun said.

“Horrible,” Yangyang agreed.

Hendery wasn’t fazed. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and nodded his head toward the other group again. “It’s Mark, Jaemin, Jeno, Chenle, Jisung. Not that it matters because they won’t talk to you. Jaemin looking at you is the most attention you’ll really ever get from them.”

Donghyuck stared at him, stunned into speechlessness for about thirty seconds. Apart from the insult thinly veiled in that statement, Hendery had listed five names, and there were six people at the table. 

As Hendery sat back and picked up his fork again, Donghyuck blurted, “What about the other one?”

Hendery blinked, surprised, but was interrupted from answering by Xiaojun, who dropped his utensils onto his plate with a loud clatter. “Can we change the subject? Who cares?”

Yangyang agreed readily, intimidated under this Jaemin kid’s initial stare. Donghyuck didn’t know if he was still looking but wasn’t going to check even if he badly wanted to know about the boy on Mark’s other side. 

When he rose from his seat to leave the dining hall, he couldn’t help his lingering attention on the table by the window. Definitely six people -- the last unidentified boy relaxed in his place at Mark’s left hand, his light brown hair tousled in waves that hung in his face and reached the nape of his neck. From here, Donghyuck couldn’t make out the words said, but saw his lips move briefly and a few of the others laughed loudly again, slapping their palms to the table surface, to their thighs. 

There was a tug on his chest as he watched them -- or maybe a nudge from behind, it could have been another student passing by his solitary, frozen figure. It was hard to imagine a world where people had others like that, people to make them laugh. Donghyuck wanted to know what was so funny. 

The Jaemin kid looked over his shoulder at Donghyuck and lifted a brow. There was nothing so welcoming or warm in that look. It was his cue to leave, so he did.

Once Donghyuck settled into his room, hung a few pictures on the wall and unpacked his clothes, and gone through the extensive tour of the grounds during orientation, he felt like he had a pretty good handle on this private boarding school thing. He hadn’t accounted for sleeping through his alarm on the first day of classes only to wake up in confusion at the sound of Hendery opening the door of their room.

“Good luck!” Hendery said before leaving. 

Donghyuck lay in bed for a few more minutes, slowly processing what was happening before he realized the time and had gotten ready in a whirl of panic and chest pain only to throw himself out the door five minutes before the first period of the day began. 

No breakfast, caffeine, or most importantly, mental preparation, Donghyuck dove headfirst into Norton. He learned within a few hours that the most important thing he’d forgotten was actually deodorant and brushing his teeth, but the only people who spoke to him were teachers and he thought it would be unfair to crucify him based on his body odor, since he had been running around lost all morning. 

By the time he slid into Mr. Nakamoto’s ancient and world history class, he was ready to crawl back into bed and pray that it was all a dream and that he would respawn tomorrow with the previous day erased. But he had never been that lucky. 

“We meet again,” Mr. Nakamoto said when Donghyuck arrived, breathless from sprinting up three flights of stairs and down the hall. His ribs twinged with an oncoming cramp, but he tried not to let it show on his face. 

Mr. Nakamoto smiled at him like he knew anyway and didn’t mind. It was the most welcoming thing Donghyuck had experienced all morning. It didn’t hurt that he had a great set of teeth. 

“Have a seat, please. You are next to…” Mr. Nakamoto looked down at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Jeno, please raise your hand so our new friend Donghyuck knows where to sit.”

The name sounded familiar but Donghyuck didn’t have time to process it before his attention was drawn by the raised hand across the room. The boy added a little wave to it. Sunlight from the window glinted off the expensive watch on his wrist.

Donghyuck avoided looking at his other classmates as he slipped between the rows of desks, keeping his gaze trained on the raised hand. When he finally stopped at the empty seat and set his stuff down, he realized why Jeno had seemed familiar.

This was one of the boys from the dining hall -- from Mark Lee and Jaemin’s group of six. His bleached hair stood out among the natural heads of their classmates, as bright as the wide, genuine smile he offered Donghyuck as he sat.

“New?” Jeno asked, lowering his hand. It rested on the side of his desk and he tapped his fingers on the surface.

_ Obviously _ . Donghyuck swallowed the dry answer that threatened this tentative social connection. “Yeah,” he said, extending his arm across the row between them. “Donghyuck.”

“Jeno,” the other boy said as he accepted Donghyuck’s hand into a warm, firm grip, shaking it twice before releasing it. “Rough day?”

“Is it that easy to tell?” Donghyuck asked.

At the front of the class, Mr. Nakamoto cleared his throat, finished with the attendance sheet, and called someone up from the first row to pass out the syllabus. 

Donghyuck assumed the time to talk was over, but Jeno continued, undeterred, although his voice lowered a little. “You’re okay. I was new last year, so I know how hard it is the first day.”

“Does it stop being hard?” Donghyuck asked hopefully.

Jeno’s attention drifted briefly as the front row volunteer stepped between their desks. They held out a syllabus to Jeno, receiving a much different smile in return than the thousand kilowatts grin Jeno had directed to Donghyuck. This one softened his whole face. 

“Thanks,” Jeno murmured.

The boy between them murmured out a quiet reply before turning to Donghyuck, dropping the papers unceremoniously onto the edge of his desk, so that they fluttered down to the floor as he stepped past them. 

Donghyuck huffed in annoyance and stretched to reach the pages, but Jeno had swiped them up before he could get there. Donghyuck thanked him before he twisted in his seat to see who the other was. 

The boy continued through the classroom either oblivious to his own rudeness or unbothered by it. Donghyuck couldn’t see his face until he headed back up to the front, but it made his heart sink a little when he realized who he was -- Jaemin, the boy who’d glared at him last night.

His first day and someone already didn’t like him. At least Hendery and his friends simply didn’t care. 

Jeno was looking at him when Donghyuck turned around again. Whatever he was thinking was wiped quickly from his expression as he smiled again. 

“Don’t worry,” Jeno said, “it gets better.”

A month passed before Donghyuck developed a real routine. Most days he would get up early enough to go down to breakfast, where he sat with Xiaojun until Hendery appeared and then the two would leave together. He would then go to class -- Classics, Mathematics, History. Jeno started walking him to their shared games slot after History, where he gave Donghyuck tips on all the classically English sports that everyone else seemed to have been playing since they came out of the womb. 

Donghyuck was grateful for Jeno, who seemed to try to make him feel welcome, although he never strayed too far from his core six friends to hang out with him. It annoyed him for the first few weeks, but he logically understood that he couldn’t expect anyone to dump their long-time friends for the new boy.

Besides, Donghyuck wanted to distance himself from the cold looks Jaemin gave him whenever he came across the two together. If that meant maintaining a friendly acquaintanceship with Jeno, then he wouldn’t look for anything further.

Mr. Nakamoto had become Donghyuck’s saving grace in the vast halls of Norton. 

Donghyuck often ate lunch in Mr. Nakamoto’s classroom, either chatting idly or using the time to catch up on the ridiculous amount of homework he had every night. The teacher had even begun to open up about himself more personally, telling Donghyuck about the research he was doing on ancient societies and lore as well as his own memories as a student at Norton.

Admittedly, Donghyuck was not as interested in ancient history as he was in the more recent kind.

“What are your plans for the long weekend?” Mr. Nakamoto asked him, leaning back in his desk chair as he took a break from grading quizzes. 

Donghyuck looked up from his pointless scribbles on the edge of his notebook and gave his teacher a wry smile. “Um. Homework.”

Mr. Nakamoto shook his head. “That’s a shame, Donghyuck. You should take every chance you get to have a bit of fun. Have you joined any societies yet? No one’s invited you home or anything?”

Donghyuck swallowed hard against the rising shame he felt at the man’s disappointment. He knew that he meant well, but Donghyuck tried not to think about his lack of a social life as much as possible. 

It’s not like he was super popular at home, but he’d known enough people that he’d always had something to do, even if they were boring. His main issue at home was dissatisfaction with the state of his life, especially the people around him who he knew weren’t going to do anything or go anywhere meaningful. That’s why he’d worked so hard to leave.

But he’d just ended up on the other side of the equation -- now he was the boring, meaningless person no one bothered to waste their time on.

“No,” Donghyuck answered finally. “But I might go into the village and look around.”

Mr. Nakamoto observed him quietly. Donghyuck shifted uncomfortably under his gaze but didn’t look away. He didn’t want to seem too pathetic. He would rather everyone think he didn’t want friends rather than anyone think he couldn’t make any.

“You should join a society,” his teacher urged again after a few moments. “Do you like acting? The Theater Society has open membership. Even if you don’t want to be on stage, they always need help with sets and costumes.”

There wasn’t a way out of it, was there?

“Um,” Donghyuck said.

Mr. Nakamoto continued, stretching his arms as he slid his gaze up to the ceiling, reminiscing. “I used to be in the Theater Society. I met some of my best friends there. One of them teaches it now. You met Sicheng when you arrived, right?”

“Is that his first name?” Donghyuck asked.

“He likes to feel young. It’s strange teaching somewhere you spent your teen years. Sometimes I feel the urge to just...run through the halls laughing, so I do. It isn’t as fun as it was back then, though.”

Donghyuck returned the man’s smile, relaxing. He only wanted to help him have a good year. He couldn’t fault him for that. “I’ll look into it.”

“Great!” Mr. Nakamoto cheered, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll tell Sicheng to expect you.”

Donghyuck nodded and looked back down at his notebook as the conversation died. Maybe Mr. Nakamoto was right. Maybe he just needed to push himself more and he would find what he was looking for.

Sitting with Hendery and his friends at dinner that night, sneaking glances at the six close-knit boys by the window, he couldn’t help but wonder if whatever he found could ever be enough. 

The day things started to change started like the rest. Donghyuck left his room before Hendery, murmuring a quiet, unheard goodbye as he went. He walked slowly down the hall and stairs, taking his time as he crossed the expansive lawn.

The sun was out from behind the clouds, which he’d already come to find as rare and exciting. He tilted his face up toward the warmth of it as he walked.

Stepping inside was disappointing after the brief meeting with sunshine, but Donghyuck stamped down the cold feeling that returned as he entered the dining hall a few minutes later. He saw Xiaojun at their usual table in the center of the room, his head bowed over a book, but his gaze drifted toward the tall windows as he got into line for a plate. 

There was only one boy at the table that usually fit six. He was the only one Donghyuck didn’t know the name of; he’d met Chenle and Jisung the first time he attended Theater Society. They were just as bright as Jeno, only more energetic. It still felt like crossing a line to ask after their friends. He didn’t want to come across creepy.

The solitary boy was turned to face the windows, whole body sideways in his seat. His brown hair fell around his face, long enough to brush the nape of his neck, cover where his skull met his spine. He rubbed his fingers over his throat as he stared off into the distance somewhere. Donghyuck wished he knew what he was looking at.

He only looked away when someone bumped into him from behind, hard. He grunted as his hip smacked off the edge of buffet counter, and scrambled to save his empty plate from falling off of it. 

“Can you move?” A bored, distinctly English voice said from behind him.

Donghyuck huffed out an irritated breath, looking over his shoulder at who had bumped into him.

Jaemin looked back at him passively. He held up the thermos in his hand, tilting it to show Donghyuck that it was empty. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like to get coffee. Is that alright with you?”

Donghyuck stepped forward a few feet, the encounter too unbelievable for him to manage any self-defense. 

Jaemin smiled, but it looked wrong on his cold face. “Amazing. Thank you.”

Donghyuck made a face as he turned around again, hurrying through the line to get to Xiaojun at the table.

Xiaojun glanced up when he approached before looking back down at his book. It was rare that they would engage in any real conversation, so when he looked back up at Donghyuck, brows furrowed together, anxiety shot through Donghyuck’s chest.

“What?” He asked, setting his plate down.

“Um,” Xiaojun said, “your backpack is leaking.”

Donghyuck blinked. He slipped his backpack from his shoulders to hold it in front of him. The main zipper was partly open, but the bottom of the bag dripped brown liquid onto the table. 

“Fuck,” Donghyuck said. He pulled the main compartment open quickly, his heart thudding, but it was already too late. The pages of his books were already soaked through with coffee.

His head jerked toward the table at the window. His eyes met Jaemin’s and the other boy smiled back at him, taking a sip from his thermos. 

“Fuck,” Donghyuck said again.

“Yeah,” Xiaojun said, “you know you should probably use a cup next time?”

Donghyuck slunk back to his dorm room after picking at breakfast. There was no way to save his textbooks, assignments, or notes, so he’d decided that a day hiding in bed would at least put off his problems, since he couldn’t yet see a way to solve them altogether.

Donghyuck had some money, yes, but replacing the expensive texts was far out of his budget. Not to mention the hours he’d spent going over his homework every night. It just felt like such a waste now. 

He dreaded calling his mother to ask for her to lend him some money. She would see right through his lies and call the school to report that he was being bullied or something stupid. He couldn’t prove anything, even if he was willing to go through with the humiliation.

Stacking his ruined study materials on his desk, not caring with the old wood got ruined, Donghyuck wondered how such a beautiful morning could have shifted into such a nightmare. Less than an hour ago he had thought that the sunshine was a sign of luck, that he might even scrape by his History exam with a decent score.

Fuck. Shit. Shitfuck.

Donghyuck groaned as he rolled off his bed to his feet, reluctantly dragging himself back over to his desk. He knew he had something worse ahead of him, he’d just somehow forgotten the exam. Mr. Nakamoto had been kind enough to allow an open note test, but how was he going to get through it when all of his work was like this?

He left his ruined bag behind as he stepped outside again. He would have to try to deal with the day, at least until he’d failed the exam, and  _ then _ he would hide. It felt awful knowing that he would let Mr. Nakamoto down, but he was at an impasse.

Donghyuck forced back the frustration that clouded his vision as he walked through the halls again, half hoping something else more horrible could happen so that he wouldn’t have to face this particular brand of shame, especially now that he could imagine the exact expression on Jaemin’s cool face. Maybe one of the heavy looking picture frames lining the hallways would fall off and hit him in the head. A small misfortune, in the wrong place at the right time.

He was almost to his first class when he saw Jeno down the hall, and a rush of something like salvation flew through his chest. Jeno was a surprisingly dutiful notetaker.

Donghyuck mentally threw out the little pride he had left as he approached him, his steps only faltering when he fully realized who Jeno stood with.

Mark Lee stood with his arms crossed over his chest, tailored uniform stretching over his shoulders. He nodded along to whatever Jeno was talking about, lips pressed together and pursed out thoughtfully. Their unnamed friend leaned back against the stone wall beside him. He looked bored, or as if he were somewhere else entirely.

Donghyuck couldn’t turn around. By the time he fully considered it, he was already behind Jeno, clearing his throat. 

The blond beamed when he turned his body, opening the closed triangle for Donghyuck to step in closer. 

“Hey, Donghyuck! What’s up?” 

“Hi, um.” Donghyuck couldn’t help but glance away from Jeno’s kind face. He looked down at his feet first, but his eyes met Mark’s when they rose again, and a vicious heat crept up Donghyuck’s neck at the uninterested expression he wore. 

“Um,” he said again. “Could I borrow your notes for the History exam? I’ll get them back to you before, it’s just that...something...happened...to mine.”

He knew the explanation was lame, but Jeno had already started opening his bag before Donghyuck finished speaking. It hung off of one arm while he rifled inside for the right notebook. “Yeah, no problem. What happened, though?”

“I spilled coffee on them,” Donghyuck lied, chuckling, “so, um, clumsy, right?”

Jeno handed him the notes, his smile unwavering. It was almost a little unnerving, how well he maintained his cheer. “It happens to all of us.”

Donghyuck thanked him quietly and Jeno nodded, closing his bag again. He knew that was his cue to leave, but his feet didn’t move even as he urged them to. It was like he was stuck in place.

His gaze found Mark’s again. Something in the older boy’s expression had shifted while Donghyuck and Jeno spoke, and he looked at him now with an open curiosity that made Donghyuck’s skin prickle all over.

“Hi,” Donghyuck said.

“Hi,” Mark said.

“I’m Donghyuck.”

He knew he sounded off and probably  _ really weird _ , but he stayed rooted in place, unable to escape now that he had the other boy’s attention.

“Mark,” the boy said.

Donghyuck looked to Mark’s left, clearing his throat. “Hi.”

The other boy didn’t react, looking down the hall in the opposite direction, his fingers grazing over his throat as he apparently lost himself in thought.

Donghyuck’s face grew warmer by the millisecond. Being ignored was just over his limit for the day. When he glanced back at Mark, he noted with surprise that he was smiling.

Mark looked down at his friend and nudged his arm. The boy raised his eyebrows as his attention floated back to the taller, black haired student. “What?”

“Someone’s talking to you,” Mark said. He sounded giddy about it.

“Um,” Donghyuck said.

This time his voice made the stranger’s gaze snap to him. He stood up straight off the wall, but he was still shorter and smaller than Donghyuck even with good posture. 

“Hi,” he said. His voice was soft, a little raspy, but warm. “Donghyuck?”

So he had been listening, however distracted. “Yeah. What’s your name?”

“Renjun,” he said. He stared openly at Donghyuck’s face, his and Mark’s expressions parallels of interest where there had been absolutely none before.

“Donghyuck’s new,” Jeno interjected into the building quiet, “it’s his first year.”

“How do you like it so far?” Mark asked.

“It’s alright,” Donghyuck lied. He suddenly felt unstuck, his breath coming a little faster along with the quicker pace of his heartbeat. He felt like he needed to go lie down, or lock himself in a bathroom stall and ask why such a brief interaction made him feel like an excited schoolboy. 

Well, he supposed that would be the most correct way to describe himself now.

“I’ll see you in class,” Jeno said as he slung his backpack onto his shoulders again. “I hope those are helpful.”

“What? Oh, yes, thank you,” Donghyuck breathed, holding the notebook, his newest prized possession, up in a sort of salute. “I will see you later. Yes.”

“Bye, Donghyuck,” Mark said, smiling to him as he turned to follow Jeno as he headed down the hall. Renjun matched Mark’s steps, their strides twins despite the difference in their height.

Donghyuck allowed himself to watch them go for a few seconds before he headed to his own first class, determined to refocus and copy as much of Jeno’s notes as he could before his inevitable demise in History. If he hadn’t been so focused on this mission, he might have turned for a second look. He didn’t, so there was no way for him to see Renjun look back over his shoulder instead.

As expected, Mr. Nakamoto pulled him aside after class. Donghyuck waved Jeno on. The waiting boy’s worried glance thrilled Donghyuck a little, but he just smiled and urged him out the door to go to his next schedule.

“I’ll give him a note for your instructor,” Mr. Nakamoto assured Jeno, amused.

“Okay,” Jeno said after a moment more of reluctance. He shot a smile to Donghyuck before vanishing from the doorway.

Donghyuck sighed, ready for the verbal lashing from his teacher.

“Are you alright?”

“Um.” Donghyuck observed his teacher, surprised, but still wary.

“I know you haven’t been here as long as some others,” Mr. Nakamoto said, leaning back on the edge of his desk, “but you’re a hard worker. As much as I don’t like how buried in your studies you are, it’s not like you to be so distracted. Is there anything going on you’d like to talk about?”

“Um,” Donghyuck said again.

The two of them stood there for a few moments more, Mr. Nakamoto waiting for an answer, Donghyuck wishing to be released from the room. Unfortunately, Mr. Nakamoto didn’t seem like the type to believe excuses.

“Um, there was an accident and my notes were...I couldn’t really use them,” Donghyuck admitted finally.

Mr. Nakamoto hummed thoughtfully. “An accident.”

Donghyuck flushed. “Yes.”

“Alright,” Mr. Nakamoto said. Students in his next class had begun filtering in the door, a few sneering knowingly at Donghyuck as they passed him, others ignoring him altogether. 

Donghyuck curled his fingers into his palm, squeezing both hands into fists, and then relaxed his hands slowly, repeating the motion until he felt his shoulders relaxing where they had hunched up defensively. 

Mr. Nakamoto grabbed a stack of sticky notes from his desk and jotted out a quick note, signing it with a flourish. He handed it over to Donghyuck. “Let me know if you want to talk more. I’m a very good listener.”

Donghyuck smiled gratefully. “You won’t report me for academic dishonesty, right? Jeno let me borrow his notes, so our exam answers might be the same.”

Mr. Nakamoto smiled widely, showing off all those perfect teeth. “I’ll let it slide this time.”

Donghyuck grinned, folding the note between his fingers as he left the classroom. 

By the end of the day, the effects of everything weighed on Donghyuck’s mind, dragging him in the only direction that made sense anymore -- his bed. He lingered between buildings for a few minutes. Despite the ups and downs of the day (including a hard whack to the stomach by a squash racket), Norton was a stunning place to live.

At home, Donghyuck rarely would have described himself as being in tune with nature or whatever, but here he could see himself becoming an outdoorsy type. It was all the rain and gloomy, gray days, he thought, that made the sunshine that much more exciting. 

When he made his way up to his room, Hendery was already leaving, ready to go down for dinner. He didn’t wait for him. Donghyuck didn’t stop him.

He dropped heavily on his bed, releasing a quiet groan as his certainly bruised stomach made contact with the mattress. 

Maybe Mr. Nakamoto would be able to lend him the textbook for his history class, but he doubted any of his other instructors would be so kind. Not many of them had really warmed up to him. Sicheng, the theater teacher, was only welcoming to make up for how unwelcoming he had been the first day -- it was clear to see that he wasn’t particularly fond of him.

Donghyuck wondered what was more offensive about him, that he wasn’t English or that he wasn’t wealthy?

He sighed for the hundredth time that day, a performance in solitude. Lifting his hand to his mouth to bite the edges of his cuticles, the stack of books on his desk caught his eye.

They were right where he had left them, heaped unceremoniously on his desk this morning. However, now the books were neater, straight lines and corners pressed evenly together. They also weren’t his books at all.

He sat up, squinting at his desk just a few feet away. The books were all clean, no trace of brown stains or the telltale waves of a wet page dried.

Had Hendery brought him new books? Had Mr. Nakamoto figured out what was up and broken into his dorm room? Did Donghyuck have secret powers that allowed him to wish for anything, and for that thing to appear?

His thoughts whirled faster and faster until, with a louder groan, the most theatrical he could muster up from the well of his inner drama, Donghyuck flopped bodily back onto his mattress and rolled over to face the wall. He was absolutely  _ over _ this day.

Looking back, there was no real way he could have known what was ahead of him, how he’d already stepped off the edge, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the fall.


	2. pt. ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who commented on the first part, i hope you enjoy this part! i watched a whole ten minute rugby for beginners video in preparation

Donghyuck slept through his alarm again the next morning. It was like he was back in the first few weeks of lost time when he couldn’t get a handle on his jet lag.

Considering he only woke up from cramping hunger pains, he decided to prioritize breakfast over brushing his hair, or making sure his uniform wasn’t wrinkled from leaving it on the floor overnight.

He combed his fingers through his hair on his way to the dining hall, grateful that the oil build up on his scalp was at least allowing for some pretense of volume. His bag felt heavy with his new books, his shoulders dragged down with the weight of his remaining questions.

The sun wasn’t shining anymore. He noted its absence mournfully as he headed inside. 

When he felt the tap on his shoulder in line, he couldn’t help but tense up, expecting another unfortunate run in with Jaemin’s coffee cup.

“Good morning,” Mark Lee said.

Donghyuck swallowed, hard, and gripped his plate tight enough for his knuckles to pale. “Uh. Good morning.”

Mark smiled. His black hair was pushed neatly back from his face, exposing his forehead. His skin was super clear in a way that made Donghyuck want to hate him, but his smile was too kind to try.

“I was just wondering,” Mark said, “do you want to have breakfast with me?”

Donghyuck realized he was nodding before he could fully process the ramifications of having breakfast with Mark, and by the time he had processed the direction his feet had taken, carrying him across the cafeteria behind Mark, he was already standing in front of the table by the windows.

“Donghyuck!” Chenle cheered, greeting him like an old friend. 

They had met at the first Theater Society meeting, but they hadn’t had the chance to get to know each other. Beside Chenle, Jisung looked near death, his head resting on the table next to his untouched bowl of soggy cereal. He kept his eyes closed despite Chenle’s outburst, and Donghyuck wondered if he had learned to sleep through his friend’s volume.

Donghyuck said hello, too quiet at first, and grimaced before repeating himself, but neither Chenle nor Mark seemed to mind. 

“Sit,” Mark said. His fingers brushed over Donghyuck’s shoulder as he nudged him toward the empty chair to his right. 

Donghyuck sat.

Mark relaxed into his own seat like it was a throne constructed for him personally. He nodded thoughtfully as Chenle started to tell him about his morning. He seemed genuinely interested. It might have just been an interesting story, but Donghyuck wouldn’t know, since he couldn’t hear a word of it over the rushing sound in his ears.

He jumped, startled, when someone squeezed his shoulders firmly.

“Hey, how are you?” Jeno asked warmly as he moved from behind Donghyuck to sit. 

“I’m…” Donghyuck trailed off as he noticed, somehow for the first time, Renjun sitting across from him. 

It was hard to believe that he hadn’t noticed him there yet, all things considered. But there he was, as if he’d never not been there, watching him curiously from the other side of the table. When their eyes met, Renjun smiled, tilting his chin up in a small nod of acknowledgment. 

Donghyuck’s gaze trailed down Renjun’s face to his neck, eyeing his unbuttoned collar, his loose tie, and the exposed skin of his throat.

“I’m alright,” Donghyuck finished. 

“Cool,” Jeno hummed around a mouthful of eggs. 

Although the moment was all a little overwhelming, Donghyuck was kind of grateful that Jeno didn’t try to strike up any further conversation, or question his presence at the table. Belatedly, Donghyuck realized the seats at the table were all filled, which filled his stomach with a heavy weight.

He couldn’t bring himself to bring any of the food he’d gotten up to meet his lips, his tongue too dry to move. He could almost hear Mark ask him a question, but his mouth was glued shut with increasing dismay.

The back of Donghyuck’s neck prickled the moment Jaemin walked into the cafeteria. If he had an ounce of self-preservation he would have left. He refused to turn around and look at him, but felt it when Jaemin stopped behind him. He tried not to imagine his expression, but he suspected he would have nightmares about it anyway.

He wasn’t scared of him. Donghyuck wasn’t the type to be scared of  _ people _ , especially privileged brats like the other boy was proving himself to be. He just couldn’t help but wonder if Mark had only invited him to have breakfast at their table to embarrass him, if this was a joke he hadn’t been let in on but would inevitably be at his own expense. Literally, if Jaemin went for round two of pouring shit in his backpack.

“Jaemin,” Mark said. “Pull up a chair.”

Donghyuck’s face burned. The screech of a chair being dragged across the floor from another table rang in his ears like an alarm. He raised his gaze from his plate with the intention of staring out the window, hoping there might be something interesting that could pass for grabbing his attention, but his eyes caught on Renjun’s instead.

The other boy looked amused, but quietly so. His lips didn’t pull into a wide grin that would give him away, but there was a spark in his eyes that only made the heat in Donghyuck’s cheeks worse. Maybe it was just the light in the dining hall glinting off the moisture in his eyes and reflecting off his skin, but Renjun looked like he could eat them all whole, if only it wasn’t too boring.

If this was all a joke, it wasn’t one played on him, but curated for Renjun’s sole amusement.

“Rough morning?” Renjun asked as Jaemin sat in his chair, shoved between Jeno and Chenle. Jaemin ignored him.

Out of all of them, he looked the most put together, surpassing Mark’s aura of cool maturity. His hair was carefully styled, dark locks falling over his forehead in delicate swoops that made Donghyuck’s hands tingle with the desire to mess them up.

Jaemin had the look of someone who was not to be touched, and that was only more enticing. He would probably be really upset if someone wrinkled his neatly ironed uniform, or scuffed his shoes. It would be awesome.

Donghyuck’s musings were interrupted when Jaemin finally spoke, his crisp English accent cutting through the low murmur of the dining hall.

“Are you all ready for the holiday?” Jaemin asked.

Embarrassing relief swept over Donghyuck as he realized his presence was being ignored. That was perfect.

Jeno nodded eagerly, standing a little from his chair to reach for the salt shaker in the middle of the table. He almost knocked over his full glass of milk, but Jaemin saved it, and Jeno’s phone, with clearly practiced ease, his hand darting under Jeno’s outstretched arm to hold the cup steady.

“Is it just us?” Jeno asked.

Jisung lifted his head from his arm and cracked his neck. He paused a moment after the popping sound before looking back over at Jeno. “Who else?”

“I don’t know,” Jeno said, but he glanced at Donghyuck. “Maybe we could all invite someone else. I think Lucas isn’t doing anything over holiday, just staying at school.”

“You fill the role of Neanderthal jock well enough on your own,” Jaemin said.

Jeno laughed, loud, and began to shake way too much salt onto his scrambled eggs. Donghyuck wondered just how much Jaemin could get away with.

“What are you doing for the break?” Mark asked. It took a moment for Donghyuck to realize he was speaking to him.

Donghyuck struggled not to squirm under the attention of the majority of the table. He had been fine with being a silent observer, but Mark’s eyes on his felt hot. “I’m not doing anything. I’ll just be here at school.”

“You shouldn’t have to stay here alone,” Mark said.

Donghyuck shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

Mark hummed, but didn’t press him further. Instead, he pinned his gaze on Jaemin, who looked far more interested in his cup of coffee than in participating in the conversation. 

“Oh, shit!” Jeno suddenly exclaimed, pushing his chair back from the table. He stood, but leaned over his plate, quickly shoving the rest of his food into his mouth. 

Jaemin blinked up at him. “Forget something?”

Jeno’s cheeks ballooned with the half-chewed food stuffed into them. He smiled anyway and nodded. He didn’t offer an explanation, just grabbed his backpack before darting away from the table and running out of the dining hall altogether.

If Jaemin was capable of emitting a physical chill, then Jeno was kind enough to block Donghyuck from the full force of it. With him gone, Donghyuck shifted in his seat. He was relieved when he noticed the time on Mark’s old-looking watch and saw that it was time for him to go as well, if he didn’t want to be late to his first period all the way across the school.

He stood, grimacing as he banged his knee on the edge of the table. The force of it rattled Jaemin’s cup, prompting a quiet sigh out of him.

“Um,” Donghyuck said, “thanks for…having me.”

“Have a good day,” Mark murmured. “Will we see you for dinner?”

Donghyuck bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. “Sure.”

“See you, Donghyuck!” Chenle called after him as he turned to leave.

Donghyuck exhaled in a rush as he headed out of the dining hall. He must have stepped into another world when he got out of bed this morning, because this day was too strange to belong in the same universe as the one where he’d been friendless and lonely for nearly a month. 

His steps faltered as he passed Hendery and Xiaojun setting their plates by the kitchen drop off. He offered them a small smile, raising his hand to wave, but dropped it again quickly at the disinterest written all over Hendery’s face. Xiaojun didn’t even spare him a glance.

Back to square one, then. Strangers all over again. 

Outside of Mr. Nakamoto’s classroom, there was one another place Donghyuck felt like he could blend in, the weight of being new or foreign lifting off his shoulders the moment he stepped inside. It helped that few people would approach any stranger here, whether to bother them or extend any kindness.

Donghyuck exhaled heavily as he crossed the threshold of the library, the high ceiling and countless stacks of books seeming to absorb all the stress of his day and release only calming, studious energy. This was exactly what he needed – somewhere he wouldn’t have to think about anyone else, where he could push all his whirling thoughts aside and focus on the homework that had somehow piled up again after only a few days.

At least the price of Norton matched the level of education it offered. He already felt years ahead of his former classmates at his old high school, and the thought that he might have missed this opportunity made him feel a little sick sometimes. 

He wove a path through the shelves, mumbling a few apologies as he passed close by a few serious looking students, accidentally bumping their shoulders with his backpack. 

The corner of the library he liked the most was a little darker than the rest, the overhead lights nearly blocked out by a wide shelf. The shelf was made out of some old wood. He hadn’t noticed at first, but after a close inspection, there were initials and childish jokes carved along the wood, between books that were far older than him. Every time he looked at them, he wondered where all those boys had ended up, what kind of men they were now. He wanted to carve his own name alongside theirs, for someone else to wonder at, but it didn’t feel right – his name would stand out like a beacon among the rest. It didn’t belong.

Usually, this space, with its table for four, was uninhabited, too far away from the rest of the library, a temptation to distraction. But when he rounded the corner, he found two heads close together in conspiracy, hunched over open books. He stood there for a moment, unsure of where to go now. He didn’t want to be caught staring, but when Chenle raised his blond head he only smiled, waving him over.

“Donghyuck,” Chenle hummed, “come here.”

Donghyuck let his feet carry him to the table, sitting in one of the free chairs, across from Jisung. The younger boy nodded his greeting to him, too absorbed in whatever he was studying to direct more than an eighth of his concentration away from it.

“You know,” Chenle said, his voice just an octave above traditional library standards. “You know, I was really excited that Mark asked you to sit with us. You’re really cool, I can tell.”

“Thanks,” Donghyuck said dumbly.

“You don’t talk enough in Society meetings,” Chenle continued. “It was hard to figure you out at first.”

“Have you figured me out now, then?” Donghyuck asked. “Seems too easy.”

Chenle tapped a finger to his chin, smiling still. “I’m working on it. Let me ask you a question.”

Donghyuck waited while Chenle glanced at Jisung, who didn’t notice, and had to be nudged insistently to look up from his book to meet Chenle’s gaze. The youngest raised his eyebrows, clearly not following the series of expressive glances Chenle directed between Donghyuck and themselves.

“Oh, jeez,” Chenle sighed. “I give up. Donghyuck, how do you feel about the supernatural?”

Jisung gasped a little, suddenly very alert and very exasperated if the way he punched his friend’s shoulder was anything to go by.

“Um,” Donghyuck said. That definitely wasn’t a question he was expecting. He thought after the whole ‘you’re cool’ thing that Chenle might have been going for something a tad more personal. Still, the way Chenle and Jisung immediately leaned in to hear his answer, their eyes big and excited…he supposed that this was a question that they considered important to the utmost degree.

“Yeah?” Chenle prompted

“I guess…” Donghyuck started again. “I guess anything is possible.”

Chenle looked almost pleased with his answer, nodding thoughtfully, but Jisung narrowed his eyes. He leaned in closer to Donghyuck over the table, his palm splayed over the text of the book in front of him. 

“Saying something doesn’t not exist doesn’t mean you think it does,” Jisung said. It was the most Donghyuck had heard him speak.

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck said truthfully, “I haven’t experienced anything supernatural, and I haven’t seen anyone with convincing enough evidence, but I would listen to anyone who thought they had some, I guess.”

Jisung didn’t look satisfied, but Chenle practically bounced out of his chair, his smile wide. “That’s what we’re working on!”

“What is?”

“Proof!” Chenle said, pushing Jisung’s hand off a book to hold it up to Donghyuck, nearly hitting him in the face. “Nobody believes us, but if we joined forces with you, I bet they would have to listen!”

Donghyuck blinked at the words swimming in front of him, trying to focus his eyes enough to read them, but Chenle’s hands were shaking too much for any of the sentences to make sense. “Proof of what?”

Chenle peered over the top of the book. He lowered his voice to a whisper before he said it: “Vampires.”

Donghyuck swallowed his laughter. The two boys in front of him were far too serious to be mocked in any way – not only would he feel guilty about it, but he didn’t really have the right to. If they thought vampires existed, he couldn’t say they didn’t – they were probably more of an authority on the subject than he was, by all means.

“Really?” He asked instead.

“Yes,” Chenle said, “we’ve been investigating since last year.”

Donghyuck knew Chenle was in his second-year at Norton, but thought Jisung was younger than him. Chenle beat him to his question.

“Jisung is a genius,” he said, pride evident in his tone, “he should be in classes with you, but they won’t let him for…’socialization.’”

They both rolled their eyes. 

“So,” Donghyuck said, “you want my help? With…proving vampires exist?”

“We don’t need your help proving it,” Jisung said, “we already know they do.”

Chenle patted Jisung’s shoulder in what he must have thought was a soothing gesture, but seemed to just make the younger develop an eye twitch. 

“We think you’re really smart,” Chenle said, “you must be, to show up at Norton so late in the game. So we just want you to be on the lookout. If you notice anything suspicious, let us know.”

“I will,” Donghyuck said, nodding, “I will definitely let you know.”

Jisung scrunched his nose up briefly, like he’d tasted something extremely bitter, and reached over to tug the book out of Chenle’s hands, away from Donghyuck. For the first time, Donghyuck could see the cover, the way the old canvas cracked along the spine, and the embossed title: History of the English Occult. 

Without warning, Renjun dropped into the remaining empty seat. Donghyuck startled, blinking at him with wide eyes, calmly lounging in the space he hadn’t been in just a second ago.

“What are we talking about?” Renjun asked.

Chenle and Jisung shared a look. Jisung’s eyelid twitched again. He pressed two fingers to the corner of his eye, and shook his head. “Nothing.”

Jisung leaned over, rifling through his bag, but Donghyuck noticed Chenle slipping the book off the table and dropping it into the open pouch.

Renjun turned his attention to Donghyuck. “Are they bothering you?”

“I think I might be bothering them.”

“They like being bothered,” Renjun said.

How about you? Donghyuck thought, but the words didn’t dare steal past his lips. He pressed them closed just in case. 

Renjun continued, unaware, “Are you busy right now?”

“We’re doing homework, like you should be doing,” Chenle chided. Donghyuck appreciated the sentiment, even though it was a lie. He felt like everyone but him flew through their coursework, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

Renjun said, “I’m going to go watch rugby practice.”

Donghyuck tilted his head, curious. “Rugby? Is that the one with the…”

“Yes,” Renjun answered, despite Donghyuck definitely not knowing what one it was or with what.

Jisung packed up Chenle’s bag for him, ignoring his friend’s half-hearted complaints. 

“Jeno plays?” Donghyuck asked, although he knew he did. Jeno only talked about History, his friends, and rugby.

“Come watch with us,” Renjun said as he stood.

Well, with an invitation like that, who was he to refuse?

The day had yet to grow any brighter. Luckily, Donghyuck was easily distracted from the gloom by the opportunity to observe the boys at close range. The four of them took a square formation as they moved out of the library, through the halls, and outside – Renjun and Chenle walked closely together in the lead, while Jisung walked alongside Donghyuck.

Jisung didn’t seem pleased to be stuck with him. But he didn’t seem pleased about a lot of things, so Donghyuck hoped it wasn’t all to do with him. Still, he wasn’t going to force the younger into a conversation, so he tried to listen in on Renjun and Chenle’s conversation instead. It was without much success. The two were engaged in quiet conversation already, but it didn’t help that they also were speaking in Chinese to one another. It surprised Donghyuck less than he thought it might.

Not many people were bilingual at home. Most of his classmates struggled to keep up with high school level language learning, and it was rare that he met anyone else who might speak a second or third language at home. At Norton, it seemed like the norm. 

Maybe he could chalk that up partially to the complete access the students here had to seemingly anything – every resource they could imagine at their fingertips. He supposed he had the same opportunity now.

They stepped off the main path outside, heading toward the rugby pitch. The open courtyard was divided from the pitch by a long, high wall that cast a shadow over the grass when the sun shone down on it. 

Donghyuck expected for the boys to head around the wall, but they stopped along it. He jogged forward to cross the few yards between himself and the others.

Jisung squatted down, his fingers laced together to make a strong foothold for Chenle, who used the boost push himself up onto the wall, pulling his body up the rest of the way with a strength Donghyuck wouldn’t have known he possessed just by looking at him. Once Chenle was secure, he reached down to grasp Jisung’s hand, and assisted the younger in pulling himself up as well. 

Donghyuck eyed the wall with some hesitance. He wasn’t un-athletic, and considered himself in pretty good shape, but achieving the same feat with any similar grace was out of the question. 

He stepped a little closer, and placed his backpack on the ground along with the others’. As he chewed on his lower lip, considering the best was to go about this, a hand reached out towards him.

He looked up, meeting Renjun’s eyes. The boy’s hair hung over his brows as he leaned over, his hand outstretched for Donghyuck to take. He was even smaller than the two younger boys, and Donghyuck doubted he had the strength to bear Donghyuck’s weight as he pulled him up. 

Renjun pointed down toward the side of the wall, about halfway up the height. “There’s a gap you can put your foot on. It’s easy.”

Donghyuck took a deep breath and held it. He put his hand in Renjun’s. The boy gripped it tightly, waiting for Donghyuck to do his part before pulling. 

“Thanks,” Donghyuck breathed once he was securely squatting on the bricks. The edges of them dug into his thighs even through his clothes – the dull scrape against the seat of his pants made him think he would definitely need to do laundry later, and he just hoped he wouldn’t tear any of the seams.

It took him a moment to realize that Renjun hadn’t released the firm hold of his hand. 

It was a little embarrassing, for Donghyuck at least, because his palms had a tendency to be clammy. Renjun didn’t seem to notice or mind. When he let go, after a few moments of Donghyuck staring at him, he didn’t even wipe his hand on his pants. 

Instead, he pointed at the rugby practice, gesturing for Donghyuck to look at well. Donghyuck’s cheeks flamed red hot. Sometimes he blanked out and got caught up on one thing and couldn’t refocus his brain until he’d figured it out, but his mom always said that was just him being dramatic, so he forced his gaze forward, away from Renjun, toward the group of young men huddled together on the field.

After a moment, it registered to him that they weren’t huddled together to discuss strategies. There was a push and pull within the group, and a lot of grunting. They only broke apart when a ball flew backward out of the huddle. 

Donghyuck watched the boys race after it, confused, but already completely invested in the fast pace of the game unfolding before him. 

“Have you ever watched rugby before?” Renjun asked.

Donghyuck shook his head without his gaze leaving the team running down the field. “Which one is Jeno?”

“He’s Five,” Renjun answered. Donghyuck followed the line of his pointer finger once more down the field to see the boy in question. 

Donghyuck had been searching for his bleached-blond hair, but it wasn’t visible at all with the padded headguard fastened securely over his head. Resting his elbows on his knees, Donghyuck leaned precariously forward, watching Jeno race down the pitch.

His fascination was why he almost screamed when he felt a hand wrap around his ankle from below. 

Mark smiled up at them all, already letting go of Donghyuck. Jaemin had taken both their bags and was setting them in the grass a few feet away. 

“Give me a hand?” Mark asked, already reaching up to him without an answer.

Donghyuck nodded, of course, taking Mark’s hand to help him up onto the wall. Renjun scooted over to make room for Mark to settle between them. Donghyuck glanced down their line of spectators to see Jaemin comfortably lounging across the bricks on the other side of Jisung, like he’d been there his whole life.

Mark adjusted his glasses once he was securely seated. “Jeno’s fast, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Donghyuck agreed. “I’ve never watched rugby before.”

“It’s very English,” Renjun said.

Mark smiled. Donghyuck wanted to ask where they were both from, since their accents betrayed them as being not natively British, but the moment passed before he could find the most casual, cool words. 

Donghyuck had never really had a problem with socialization or nerves, but this specific situation, being asked around with a group so clearly tight-knit and infamously impenetrable, made him doubt himself. He didn’t like that. It made him more nervous that he had seemingly lost his self-certainty than it did to just say what was on his mind and interact honestly.

They fell into comfortable silence as they watched together, like Mark could sense Donghyuck didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to press him too hard. 

Jeno headed toward them once practice dispersed, walking across the pitch with a much taller teammate alongside him. The stranger gestured frantically with his hands as they walked, the way he carried himself just as loud as the laugh that rang out across the emptying field.

“Hi,” Jeno said when they reached them. His eyes caught on Jaemin’s and he stopped in front of him, reaching up. Jaemin passed down a bottle to him.

To his surprise, the other boy stopped in front of Donghyuck. He grinned up at him, extending a big hand for Donghyuck to shake, which he did.

“Donghyuck?” The boy asked. “I’m Lucas. I’ve heard a lot about you from Hendery.”

A few feet away, Jaemin laughed.

“Nice things?” Donghyuck asked, smiling as politely as he could with the nervous thrum in his chest.

Lucas ignored the question, or he was too excited to hear it. “You should try out for rugby!”

Rugby? It looked fast, and painful. Not to mention, he’d be playing with guys who’d known the game for years. He’d have to have a death wish to try out for that. 

Yet, the words spilled out of his mouth before he could analyze why it would be the worst idea. “Yeah, it looks fun. Are there try outs coming up?”

“We can talk to the coach about it,” Jeno cut in. He smiled warmly, waving a belated greeting to Donghyuck. His approval was appreciated. Above him, Jaemin’s lips were pressed together and pursed out like he’d just bitten into something sour. 

“Cool,” Donghyuck said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it, you seem really strong, so we’ll be thanking you if you make it on the team and win us some games,” Lucas hummed. He reached over to Jeno and squeezed his bicep. “I’ll see you later.”

Jeno nodded, his cheeks ballooned out with the long drink of water he’d just taken. He swallowed with a loud gulp, a few drops leaking out of the corners of his mouth to run down his chin. “See you, Lucas.”

_ What am I getting into? _ Donghyuck thought as he watched Lucas walk away. 

He followed the others as they hopped down off the wall, but turned down Chenle’s invitation to go into town. He still had to review for a Literature quiz and start an essay for his Classics class. Even if he knew he would procrastinate by playing games on his phone while lying in bed, it was still the right choice to stay on campus. 

After exchanging numbers with Chenle and Jisung both, Donghyuck waved to them all before shouldering his backpack. To his surprise, however, Mark fell into step alongside him.

“Do you mind if I walk with you?” Mark asked.

Donghyuck shook his head, biting down on the inside of his cheeks.

“I didn’t expect you to say yes to rugby,” Mark said after a few moments of silence. 

“Why not?” 

“You seem very…studious.”

Donghyuck raised his eyebrows in surprise, both at the assumption and that Mark had thought very much about him at all.

“It’s just that,” Mark continued, seeming a little flustered, “you’re always in your library or your room, doing homework. I mean. I know you’re in Theater, but you’re always running away to be by yourself.”

“I don’t actually like being by myself,” Donghyuck said. “I just don’t have anyone to be around.”

“You’re not friends with your roommate?”

“Hendery is…nice. I don’t think he wants me around.”

Mark nodded, looking ahead of them into the distance as his thoughts rolled around his head. Donghyuck waited, patient, but eager to hear.

“Hendery’s complicated,” Mark said finally.

Donghyuck snorted. “Aren’t we all?”

Mark shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, a small playing over his lips. “Yeah.”

“Anyway,” Donghyuck said, taking a deep breath, “anyway, if you want to hang out, you just have to ask. Maybe you can help me with my homework, since you’ve already done all this stuff.”

“I don’t know,” Mark said slowly, “I’m really busy with…looking at universities and…making sure Chenle and Jisung don’t accidentally kill someone with a wooden stake.”

A grin pulled at Donghyuck’s lips. “Right. All the vampires lurking around the school halls.”

“What? You don’t believe in vampires?”

They had nearly reached the front door of Donghyuck’s residence hall, and he slung his backpack around onto the crook of his elbow to dig into the pockets for his keys. “I believe in a lot of things, but blood-sucking monsters might be pushing it.”

Mark didn’t respond right away, so Donghyuck looked back at him as he opened the door. At first glance, the senior looked amused, but there was something else hiding behind his expression that piqued Donghyuck’s curiosity.

“What?” Donghyuck asked.

“Nothing,” Mark murmured, adjusting his own bag on his shoulders. “I’d like to hear about what you do believe in, if you’re interested in telling me.”

“Sure,” Donghyuck said with a sly smile, “I love swapping ghost stories.”

Mark laughed. It burst out of his chest so fast it felt like a sharp slap to Donghyuck’s skin. 

“Me too,” Mark said, grinning. “Let’s meet up after the holiday and discuss.”

“Does the library work?”

Mark nodded, still smiling as he took a few steps backward, presumably to go to his own residence hall. “The library works. Tuesday after dinner?”

“I expect all of England’s greatest horror hits,” Donghyuck hummed.

Mark laughed again and waved before turning on his heel, heading down the path to one of the large stone buildings a few over. Donghyuck watched him until he figured it would be creepy to continue staring, and headed inside, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

Hendery was sitting at his desk when Donghyuck opened the door, Xiaojun occupying Hendery’s bed while Yangyang sprawled out on the carpet, an open textbook covering his face. Donghyuck’s roommate looked up when the door opened, only to make a face at the beaming smile that Donghyuck hadn’t yet managed to get rid of.

“What are you so happy about?” Xiaojun asked.

Yangyang sat up. His textbook fell to the floor with a loud slapping sound that made Hendery’s hand tighten around his pen. They all watched Donghyuck shrug and sit on his bed to pull his shoes off.

“Is it Mark?” Yangyang asked. “I bet it’s Mark. We saw you sitting with them this morning.”

Was it only this morning? It had felt like a week or two since Donghyuck had followed Mark across the dining hall to the table by the windows.

Finally, Donghyuck managed to school his expression. “I just had a good day.”

“It’s Mark,” Yangyang said gleefully. “He’s super nice, isn’t he?”

Hendery rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath as he turned back to his work.

“Are you finished with your notes yet?” Xiaojun cut in, stretching his leg out to nudge Yangyang’s shoulder with his foot. “Stop bothering Donghyuck.”

The boy wasn’t bothering Donghyuck at all, but the look on Xiaojun’s face told him he should keep it to himself.

As the three went back to what they were doing, Donghyuck flopped down onto his bed, pulling out his phone to check his messages and maybe play a game. He’d already received three texts from Chenle, detailing required reading for cryptid hunting, and saw that Chenle had added him to a groupchat with Jisung as well, which the younger had yet to reply to.

Donghyuck bit his lip to suppress the smile that threatened to bloom again. Movement caught his eye, and when he glanced up over his phone he saw Yangyang waving a little at him. Their eyes caught. Yangyang smiled widely one moment and the next mouthed: Mark Lee.

Donghyuck tried not to laugh. Mission accomplished, Yangyang winked and looked back down at his textbook. 

It was definitely a good day.

Maybe Donghyuck was naïve, but the cloud he was riding in his remaining excitement from the day came crashing back down to earth as he stepped out of the shower that night before bed. 

Jaemin looked bored standing there with his back to the sink, but Donghyuck knew without asking that he was there because of him. Did he want to shove Donghyuck back under the showerhead and drown him? Somehow, Donghyuck knew he would probably let him without much of a fight.

“Finally,” Jaemin sighed as Donghyuck stepped out.

Donghyuck clutched his towel tighter around his waist, watching him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

Jaemin rolled his eyes, stepping forward closer to Donghyuck. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his gaze up toward the ceiling. He sighed so heavily Donghyuck could almost imagine that the weight of the whole world rested on his shoulders. If it did, he was sure Jaemin could pay someone to carry it for him.

“I want to invite you to my house for the weekend.”

Dongyuck blinked at him. He reached one hand up to rub his ear, just to make sure there wasn’t water clogging it and making him mishear things. “Um. What?”

“Donghyuck,” Jaemin said seriously, looking somewhere over Donghyuck’s shoulder. His stare was intense enough to make Donghyuck take a look as well, but there was nothing but the empty shower. “I am inviting you to my house for the long weekend.”

“Oh. Alone?”

Jaemin sneered, his gaze finally falling to Donghyuck’s face. “No, not  _ alone _ . Everyone else is coming.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck said again. His mind had gone blank. He couldn’t find the words to respond properly.

“If transportation is a concern, then don’t let it be,” Jaemin continued, “Jeno will drive all of us.”

“Um.”

Jaemin sighed again. “I will take that as a ‘yes,’ although if you find anything else to do, you should definitely do that. Like, sitting in your room all weekend, or dropping out. Please don’t let me stop you.”

Donghyuck huffed. “I’ll be there.”

Jaemin looked like he wanted to convince him otherwise, but he just nodded and stepped back, already heading out of the shared bathroom without a second glance behind him. “We’re meeting in the morning at ten.”

“Um, thanks!” Donghyuck called after him.

“Whatever,” Jaemin scoffed.

Donghyuck wanted to laugh, but if Jaemin heard him then he might come back to put an end to him. Instead, he suppressed it until he got back to his room. The dirty look Hendery shot him was completely justified, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Mr. Nakamoto will definitely be proud, he thought, already eager to fill his teacher in on the holiday. Whatever happened, it would definitely be eventful.


	3. pt. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is kind of....part 2.5 because it was getting so long as the plot was....a lot for me to wrap my head around over the past week
> 
> i decided to go for quality over quantity for now so i hope this fulfills that!
> 
> heads up: added a tag for underage drinking

When Jaemin was young, he had a habit of peeking around the corners of his mother’s wing of the house, listening intently to her book club’s gossip, to the clinking of a metal spoon on expensive porcelain tea cups. The latter made him grimace. It must be Brandy. 

He’d heard his mother say before that her new friend Brandy was “new money” and watched her share a look his father. He didn’t know what the age of money had to do with anything. 

He preferred the crisp, clean bills he got for an allowance to the worn, torn and folded cash that he sometimes could find while snooping through the maid’s purse while she was in his father’s study. 

To his parents, however, it was clear that _new money_ was something bad — if not bad, then embarrassing. 

Listening to adults talk when they thought no one else could hear was exhilarating. Jaemin had made a mental list of all the most exciting things and it was almost at the top, but going on field trips with his au pair was too good to be bested. 

Last time they went to an art museum, but Spain was next on their list. They practiced Spanish and French together for fun every day after Jaemin’s piano lessons, but he’d already been to Paris last summer so that would’ve been boring.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Jaemin’s mother’s friends would coo to her, “handling the house and raising such a smart, polite boy. How do you manage?”

His mother laughed the laugh she reserved for public settings -- breathy, soft. “He’s gifted. We’re just so lucky.”

_Gifted_. She was more right than she knew. Once she learned the truth, of course, nothing changed. 

They tried therapy for a few weeks, but once Jaemin ran into one of her friend’s on the street while waiting to be picked up, it was too embarrassing for his parents for him to continue going.

Luckily, he grew into a very well-adjusted young man.

Jisung sat on the curb outside of Norton while they waited for Jeno to come around, his head cradled in his arms. It was kind of endearing that he was still so tired at nearly ten in the morning. Jaemin knew for a fact that he’d gone to sleep at nine last night, because Chenle had sent them all a picture of him asleep on top of his blankets, still in his uniform, shoes included.

Jaemin stood beside him, the edge of the curb pressed to the arches of his feet as he rocked them back and forth slowly, watching the curve of the drive for Jeno to appear around it.

Mark appeared first, dropping his duffel bag next to Jaemin’s feet as he stepped up next to him. His hair still looked messy from bed, but it wasn’t rare that Mark would roll out from between his sheets at the last minute, throw on shoes and go.

“Is your mom gonna be home?” Mark asked after a jaw-popping yawn.

“No,” Jaemin murmured, watching Mark check his phone before tucking his hands back into the pockets of his Oxford sweatshirt, “she’s out of the country with friends.”

“Oh, where?”

Jaemin shrugged and turned his attention back to the road as Jeno’s shiny red Prius pulled slowly up to the curb.

Wordlessly, Jisung stood and crossed the few steps to the car, opened the back door before it had even stopped. He slung his bag inside and followed shortly behind it.

Mark smiled. “Rough morning?”

“Isn’t every morning rough for him?” 

Jeno got out of the driver’s seat, standing beside the open door as he smiled at the two of them. 

Even more endearing than Jisung’s sleepiness was the way Jeno smiled wider when his eyes met Jaemin’s. They had walked down from their shared room together, but he still somehow seemed pleasantly surprised by him.

“Is your friend on his way?” Jaemin asked Mark, keeping his eyes on Jeno as the blond tilted his head, making a silly face at him.

“I don’t know where Chenle is,” Mark said, innocent.

It wasn’t worth enough to Jaemin for him to ask again. He stepped off the curb, moving to the front passenger’s seat to get in. Jeno ducked back into the car a moment later, his hands resting on the bottom of the steering wheel.

“This car is the worst,” Jaemin muttered as he connected his phone to the Bluetooth. “So not classy.”

“You say that every time,” Jeno said. “Yet you still don’t know how to drive, so I guess you’ll continue dealing with it.”

Jaemin did know how to drive, but it was nice to still have some things to keep to himself. Keeping some secrets was for the best of everyone, especially the two of them.

“At least you cleaned it.” He looked down at his feet, underneath which the carpet was semi-stained with mud, light brown splotches sunk too deeply into fabric.

Chenle joined Jisung in the backseat, scooting into the middle seat. He wore large reflective sunglasses over his eyes, his brightly colored outfit lightyears away from the simple uniform that they all were used to seeing him in. What Chenle lacked in subtlety, he always made up for in confidence.

“How are we all going to fit?” Jisung spoke up, voice gravel with disuse.

“Uh,” Jeno said, twisting in his seat to look at them, as if by looking he could make his backseat any bigger, “I don’t know. Maybe Donghyuck can sit on one of your laps.”

_Too bad he can’t sit on yours_ , Jaemin thought. _He would probably like that_.

“Maybe he won’t come,” Jaemin said instead. “He might have a lot of work to do.”

“He’s always doing homework, he needs a break,” Chenle pointed out.

Jaemin could feel Jeno looking at him, but he didn’t return his gaze, scrolling through his music library on his phone. 

Their questions were answered soon enough.

“I can get your bag.”

“It’s fine I’ve got it-“

“Just let me put it in the trunk, here, just-“

“I’ve really got it, it’s okay-“

“Donghyuck.”

As much as Jaemin would have liked to continue ignoring Donghyuck’s existence, he looked out the window to watch Mark and the other boy bicker over the bag, both of them holding it by the same strap.

Someone else leaving school late honked behind Jeno’s car. They must have recognized quickly just who they were honking at, however, because seconds after the sound they carefully pulled around them to drive away instead of waiting.

Finally the two outside settled their debate, with Mark smiling like he’d won something meaningful as he stepped to the back of the car to put Donghyuck’s bag in the trunk along with his own. In the backseat, Jisung held his backpack close to his chest, using it like a pillow.

Chenle chirped a greeting as Donghyuck poked his head in the open door. Jeno parroted him with an easy smile.

“Hi,” Donghyuck said.

Jaemin watched him in the rearview mirror. The boy’s auburn colored hair was pushed back from his eyes with fidgeting fingers as Donghyuck took in the space left in the car, or lack thereof.

“Um. Can we fit?” He asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chenle said as he shoved Jisung against the door. Jisung was particularly moveable when he was sleepy, as long as no one was asking him to wake up. “You and Mark can squeeze in.”

“What about Renjun?”

“He’s busy with university apps,” Mark says, tapping Donghyuck’s shoulder from behind. 

Donghyuck climbed in, to his credit not looking as justifiably uncomfortable as Jaemin would be squished between Chenle and Mark in Jeno’s tiny backseat.

By the time they pulled away from Norton, Jaemin felt like he needed a drink. The chatter that started up from the backseat, primarily from Chenle, did little to help his unease.

“I have a question,” Donghyuck piped up after a few minutes on the road, catching their attention, “how did you all meet?”

“Mark,” Jeno said without hesitation.

It stung to hear that from Jeno of all people, but Jaemin couldn’t blame him. It was the simplest explanation.

Mark had a way about him that made him nearly impossible to resist, a charisma so strong that even people who hated him seemed to get happier when he was around. Even Jaemin had fallen for it, as much as he had tried not to.

He could chalk it up to Mark’s personality, but he knew that wasn’t the whole truth. The truth was just too ugly for him to look at head on, so he would only peek at it out of the corner of his eye when he felt bold enough.

But he was growing too tired to feel brave anymore.

Jisung and Chenle had actually grown up together. It wasn’t Mark who approached them, but it was Mark who asked them to hang around last year. Jeno, the same year, had badgered Jaemin with his kindness until Mark intervened.

Jaemin, though, was the first.

“Didn’t you know each other through Mark’s cousin? What’s his name?” Chenle asked, tapping Mark’s knee with one hand and then Jaemin’s headrest.

“Hendery,” Mark supplied. “We didn’t meet through him.”

There was a choking sound that Jaemin hoped was Donghyuck.

“We met through Renjun, actually,” Mark said.

Jaemin glanced at the rearview mirror and his eyes caught on Mark’s gaze. There was a dare hidden in it, one that Jaemin didn’t want to accept.

“I’m bored,” Jaemin said, turning up the music until it was too loud for anyone to speak over. Jeno wouldn’t lower it, he knew.

He looked out the window while the rest of the boys started singing along to the radio, and willed his racing heart to still.

Jaemin didn’t live in a house. He lived in a _mansion_.

The iron-wrought gates opened automatically when Jeno pulled up to them, and he pulled the car through onto a lazily winding path. Wide green lawns opened up on either side of them as they drove, neatly cut to a precise height.

Jaemin’s place itself was long and old looking, but the kind of old that Donghyuck would see in a period drama, that would inspire fantasies about being a lord and having servants that could be summoned with a little chiming bell.

A little bell would fit perfectly in Jaemin’s hand, now that Donghyuck thought about it.

“Park in the garage,” Jaemin said to Jeno, nodding to another structure disconnected from the house, but just as grand.

Jeno parked right in front of the house instead. Donghyuck braced himself for Jaemin’s cold reaction on instinct, but the boy in the passenger’s seat only shot a sly smile at his roommate before they both exited the Prius.

It was a struggle to control his awe as Donghyuck followed them up the steps and through the front door. 

The entrance of the main house lived up to its grandeur, with high vaulted ceilings and a wide staircase. Tall stained glass windows framing either side of the doorway filtered daylight into the house, and Donghyuck was stunned to discover such a bright home churned out a brat like Jaemin.

At least his airs of entitlement made more sense. 

The boys usually stayed in three bedrooms on the side of the house that Donghyuck learned was Jaemin’s personal wing, keeping with their rooming situation at Norton, but Jaemin led him to another room around the corner from the modern-looking lounge that housed a glass-top bar and huge flat-screen TV.

Although it was tucked away and hidden, Donghyuck found the bedroom just as spacious as the rest of the place, with a glossy four poster bed, more pillows than he knew what to do with, and its own fireplace. 

The bookshelves were covered in dust. Donghyuck ran a finger over the books once Jaemin had left, and found that they were all worn paperbacks, not embossed leather or canvas covers of first edition classics he’d expected to find there. He chanced a peek at the inside of one and found a woman’s name written in neat cursive.

He wondered who had lived in this room before he got here, or, really, who had been absent from it.

A short rap on the door interrupted Donghyuck’s imagination.

Mark smiled, his bed-head tamed with streaks of what must have been water. Donghyuck could imagine him washing his hands in the bathroom just to run his fingers through his hair instead of drying them on a towel and using a hairbrush. 

“Hungry?”

He wasn’t, but he followed Mark downstairs to the kitchen, full of state of the art appliances and smooth, spotless countertops. The breakfast nook could seat at least six, which was great, all things considered.

It was too bad Renjun wasn’t here, but they wouldn’t have fit in the car.

Jaemin stood at the kitchen island, mixing drinks into clear glasses with reflective silver bands around the rims. They were probably super expensive, but Donghyuck figured he could probably buy similar ones online at a quarter of the price.

He never used to price objects at first glance, but it was quickly becoming second-nature, a constant comparison of value between his peers. Did the others do this, or would they not even notice if they did, since they would have grown up that way? Was he overcompensating?

Mark nudged his arm and led him into a proportionately huge pantry, full of way more food than Jaemin’s parents could be consuming on their own. It was clear it had been stocked just for them, with enough junk food for twenty teenage boys. 

They shared a grin between themselves, and headed into the pile for first pick while the rest of them were occupied.

Nearly all the glasses were filled by the time Mark and Donghyuck emerged from the pantry. It was relieving to see their arms filled with bags of crisps and sweets -- Jaemin had nearly sent Chenle in after them, just in case Mark had decided that making a move on someone in Jaemin’s house was acceptable.

It was very much unacceptable.

Jeno leaned over the counter to Jaemin’s right, his forearms pressed to the surface as he watched Jaemin diligently mix drinks. He was always a good audience member -- quiet and appreciative.

He ignored Donghyuck as he dropped his armful of pilfered snacks on the counter and turned his attention to all the cups.

“What’s in this?”

“It’s apple juice,” Jeno teased. He winked, as if it were necessary, and smiled widely at Donghyuck, who smiled back.

“It’s a little early for apple juice, isn’t it?”

“It’s eleven! That’s, like, brunch time,” Chenle hummed without looking up from Jisung’s phone. He sat at the breakfast table, his ass on Jaemin’s mother’s placemat. 

“You can drink at brunch,” Jaemin added, finishing the last glass.

“That’s not very classy, Jaemin,” Donghyuck said. 

Jeno puffed his cheeks out in that way he did when he was trying not to laugh out loud. It made something very shadowed and mean settle in Jaemin’s stomach. 

It didn’t even make any sense. But Donghyuck had probably never even had brunch before.

He smiled, holding the glass in his hand out to Donghyuck. “Do you want it or not?”

Donghyuck looked at him like he might be trying to poison him, but there was no way Jaemin was stupid enough to try that in a room full of people, especially _these_ people who clung to every word exchanged between them with rabid curiosity.

Donghyuck accepted the glass from him, making a show of smiling.

Jaemin had a pulsing urge to deck him. He’d never been in a physical fight before, and out of his uniform Donghyuck was clearly fit, but Jaemin figured he could probably take him out of willpower alone.

But, in fact, Donghyuck’s limbs had a kind of chaotic grace to them courtesy of his lean limbs and careful observation of his own physical presence in the room. He was definitely scruffy, and Jaemin had a handsome enough face, so he’d best not risk it after all.

Instead, he poured himself another glass, lifting it toward Donghyuck, who clinked the cups together.

“Bottoms up,” Donghyuck said, and they drank.

  


It was the only drink Jaemin had that day. Donghyuck knew because he watched him.

This was definitely his territory, more so than the one Donghyuck had already encroached on at school, not that he saw the rest of the boys in the same possessive light that the English boy seemed to.

Admittedly, he could have snuck a few when Donghyuck wasn’t looking, because after a few drinks Donghyuck got distracted by discussing Jeno’s favorite songs. EDM tracks, pop remixes, anything that seemed like it could be listened to get hype for the gym.

“It’s my meditation playlist,” Jeno said, and Donghyuck laughed until his sides hurt, leaning his head on Jeno’s shoulder.

Mark was more of an old school hip-hop guy, which Donghyuck could respect. Although Donghyuck half-expected Jisung to be into medieval ritualistic chanting, he actually had a pretty good mix of RnB and indie singer-songwriter stuff on his phone, so when he stole the aux cord from Jeno, Donghyuck cheered in approval.

“You’re so different after you’ve been drinking,” Chenle teased from his place lounging over one of the long, white couches. He propped his head up on his hand, holding his phone up as he took snapchat videos of Donghyuck making faces at him.

“What?” Donghyuck asked. His mouth felt dry, but he forced his lips into a pout, pitching his voice higher as he whined, “You don’t like me now?”

Jeno shoved his shoulder and Donghyuck fell theatrically to the floor, groaning as he rolled onto his back.

“You killed him. Thought I would have to do it myself,” Jisung said.

“That’s Jaemin’s job,” Donghyuck mumbled from the floor.

Chenle snorted, but one glance at Jeno told him it wasn’t the right thing to say. Not that he would pick a fight – Jeno was too much the gentle bear.

Instead, he scrunched his nose up in a quick flash of distaste, but relaxed his expression quickly, leaving no trace of it. In his lap, his laced his fingers tightly together, the muscles in his forearms flexing.

Jaemin wasn’t in the room, though.

Donghyuck glanced at the doorway. “Where is he?”

Suddenly, Mark was standing over him.

Donghyuck looked up, reaching his hands out, and Mark took them in his own warm ones.

“Come with me,” Mark said, and Donghyuck let him haul him to his feet without argument.

Donghyuck’s whole body felt cold when Mark let go. He followed him without question, because maybe he could find that heat again by sticking close.

Mark led him through a few doorways until they reached the bathroom. He really knew his way around. They must have all come there a lot. Or maybe just Mark did.

Donghyuck tried to swallow the bitter taste blooming on his tongue but his tongue felt too big and dry to do so. He stood in the doorway, hands at his sides, and watched Mark open a few cabinets.

Mark pulled his lip between his teeth as he searched for whatever, and Donghyuck took the opportunity to observe the lines of his face, how he grunted quietly while squatting down to look under the sink.

“What are you doing?” Donghyuck asked after the search had gone on long enough.

“Usually there’s cups in here,” Mark said, “for water.”

Donghyuck stepped forward into the bathroom, stopping in front of the sink. Mark’s head came level with his hip. 

Donghyuck turned the cold water on and leaned over the marbled sink, using a cupped palm to drink from the faucet.

When he straightened up again, Mark had too. They stood in silence while water slid down Donghyuck’s chin to his neck, drops falling to his t-shirt. He wiped his mouth with his wrist, watching Mark watch him.

“Jaemin will like you eventually,” Mark said finally.

Donghyuck wanted to roll his eyes, so he did. “Ugh. Jaemin.”

“I’d like to get to know you,” Mark said after a moment. He didn’t say the ‘but,’ yet it the silence following filled it in for him.

If Mark had less of a soothing voice, Donghyuck would’ve heard the underlying threat, too, but he wouldn’t learn that until much later.

“I’m being nice,” Donghyuck said, instead of begging on his knees for another chance, like he probably should have. “I didn’t do anything to him.”

Mark smiled, and Donghyuck’s head seemed to clear, coming into focus.

“He’ll come around,” Mark murmured. “He’s all bark.”

Donghyuck’s brain got stuck on the words Mark uttered only moments before, the slow processing of the statement probably due to the shots he’d taken with Jeno.

“You want to get to know me how?” Donghyuck asked, crossing his arms over his chest so his elbow brushed Mark’s shoulder. If he leaned in a few inches they would be touching almost everywhere else.

Mark reared back, slamming his hip against the corner of the sink with force hard enough to make Donhyuck himself wince. “Um.”

“Something scare you?” Donghyuck asked, undeterred

He watched Mark’s jaw work as he thought of what to say, his lips pressed firmly closed.

“Not like that,” Mark said finally. Donghyuck blinked at him until he repeated himself. “Not like that, Donghyuck.”

“Oh.”

He waited for an explanation, for a reason why Mark seemed to always be around the corner waiting, for why he’d caught his eye last week, for what he wanted if it wasn’t _like that_.

Donghyuck had been rejected twice before. 

Once, when he was eight, one of his classmates checked ‘no’ on his note asking ‘Do you like me?’ In the end, it was okay, because he really liked the note and the heart stickers he’d put on it, so he’d rather keep it for himself than let her keep it to show to her friends anyway.

The second time was a mutual rejection. After sharing a brief kiss, he and his friend laughed off the moment that had passed between them and neither mentioned it again. It didn’t bother him.

This was the third time, and it bothered him. 

It bothered him that Mark had only taken one step back but looked slightly terrified, as if no boy had ever gotten this close to him, which was statistically impossible, both with the warmth Mark emitted from his whole existence and the sheer number of boys at he was surrounded with every day alone.

“Okay,” Donghyuck said when Mark remained silent. He turned and walked out of the bathroom, wiping his chin again with the hem of his shirt. 

Mark didn’t follow him.

His gut twisted as his feet carried him back to his room. 

The hallways of the house were considerably darker as the night closed in on them, but he hadn’t noticed how long the gloom stretched around him until he was alone, venturing farther from the sounds of the boys laughing in the living room.

Catching a glance of himself in the reflection of a mirror made him jump, so he kept his eyes on the floor until he’d made it back to his room. 

So uneasy, he wouldn’t have even noticed Jaemin had it not been for the fireplace. The gas flame cast a cozy glow over the room that stopped at the shadowed figure standing in front of the bookshelves. 

His back was to the door. Donghyuck inhaled sharply when his gaze found his form, but the other boy didn’t even react. Maybe he really was there to kill him.

“Jaemin?” Donghyuck said, his voice coming out softer than he’d intended, but he’d only tried the boy’s name in his mouth a few times before, so it still felt strange on his tongue.

Still, Jaemin faced the bookshelves, his arms straight by his sides. There was no evidence that he had heard his name.

Donghyuck stole closer to him. He could feel the beat of his heart in his head now, thrumming on his temples as he swallowed his nerves. 

It wasn’t enough for this house to be a total creep-fest at night, but now Jaemin was acting like a serial killer, too.

He might have been throwing his safety to the wind, but he reached his arm out across the space between them and brushed his fingers over Jaemin’s shoulder. 

As if his touch was a jolt of electricity, Jaemin turned to face him, but that was much, much worse. Now, in the orange glow of the fire, Donghyuck could see close up the absence of Jaemin’s expression, the dark pit of his pupils. 

Donghyuck’s gaze traveled down Jaemin’s face to his mouth, where his lips formed soundless words without ceasing.

“Jaemin?” Donghyuck whispered.

Jaemin grabbed Donghyuck’s wrists, drawing a gasp from Donghyuck’s mouth as his grip tightened, fingers digging hard into his skin. 

“Jaemin, let go of me.”

He didn’t, his lips moving faster as the room filled with the sound of Donghyuck’s breath alone. 

Donghyuck swallowed hard. If he screamed, it would most likely get swallowed up by the sheer size of the house, but there was no telling how Jaemin, or whoever this now was in front of him, would react to a shout for help. 

He stamped down his fear, focusing on the grip on his arms, and leaned in -- one inch, then two, until he could feel the blow of Jaemin’s breath on his cheek, until the words became a whisper against his ear.

_Again. Again. Again. Again. Again._

“Again?” Donghyuck repeated. His voice shook as he leaned away slowly to look into the other boy’s eyes again. “What does that mean? You- you need to snap out of this.”

He punctuated his statement by shaking his arms, trying to loosen Jaemin’s grip. Surprisingly, it worked, and he managed to rip his wrists from Jaemin’s hands. 

Swearing, Donghyuck rubbed his arms, stumbling back a few feet. His heart thundered in his chest. “What the- what the fuck?”

The boy didn’t pay him any more attention, crossing the room to the open door.

A surge of heat flowed through Donghyuck’s limbs, his face hot. He took wide strides to block him from leaving the room, pushing him back with one hand splayed out across his chest. “You’re not going anywhere until you explain what the fuck just happened.”

The adrenaline that had filled his body just a moment before chilled with one look at Jaemin’s face, as his blank expression morphed into one of familiar distaste, his brows drawing down and together.

The English boy looked down at Donghyuck’s hand on his chest, then back up to his face, his lips pulling back in an unpleasant smile.

“Please get your hands off of me,” Jaemin said politely. His voice was dust and gravel, like he’d been screaming for hours where no one could hear a sound. But his composure was the same as it had been hours ago, miles from the empty creature he’d been seconds before. 

He didn’t know what to say. Could he stop him from walking around his own home, full of his own friends, and demand an explanation?

Jaemin wasn’t going to stand there and wait for Donghyuck to figure it out.

He brushed Donghyuck’s hand aside and stepped past him. “Excuse me.”

Donghyuck could only watch him walk down the hall, speechless. 

Jaemin’s hands trembled at his sides. Donghyuck watched him curl his fingers against his palms, forming two shaking fists.

Donghyuck closed the door before Jaemin reached the end of the hall, and flipped the lock. After a second’s thought, he dragged the desk chair over to it as well. If he fell asleep tonight, then if anyone came back and unlocked the door, at least the chair would make some noise before they could enter.

He had no clue what to think of this, what to think of Jaemin. He had drunk far too much to be able to process anything logically, and logic was what held the key to answers. In the state he was in, all he could come up with were more questions.

When he sat on the edge of the mattress to catch his breath, a book lying on the floor caught his eye. It was the same paperback he’d looked at when they first got here, with the name written inside the front cover. 

He kneeled to pick it up and rubbed his thumb over the worn spine as he sat back on the bed. At least he would have something to read tonight.

He knew that sleep would not come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a holiday and 400 perspective switches and plot and jaemin! spare thoughts on jaemin?


	4. pt. iv

Loud knocking roused Donghyuck from the deep sleep he’d tried so hard to avoid. 

He bolted upright, the book loosely held between his fingers before falling to the floor with a soft thud. How he’d managed to drift off after the night he’d experienced was beyond him, but if anything it had more to do with the alcohol he’d been pouring down his throat since the mid-morning than the easing of his nerves.

There was a dull headache that floated from one area of his brain to the next. The knock following the first was much louder, shooting through Donghyuck’s ears like a nail being driven through his skull.

“Just a second!” He grimaced as his voice cracked, but managed to get out of bed without falling completely over.

After a quick survey of himself -- he _stank_ \-- Donghyuck placed the book under his pillow and crossed the room to remove the chair from the doorway.

With much relief, he was met only with Jeno’s smile.

“We’re making breakfast,” Jeno said. “Are you okay? You disappeared last night.”

“I wasn’t feeling well,” Donghyuck lied. The words slipped off his tongue before he could consider telling Jeno the not-so-simple truth.

It felt worse that Jeno pursed his lips together, his brows furrowed as his eyes filled with worry. “Tell me next time.”

“I will,” Donghyuck said, managing to crack a smile, “only if you’re down for holding back my hair, though.”

“I’m great at that,” Jeno said, touching Donghyuck’s arm briefly. 

Donghyuck promised to meet him downstairs as soon as he had showered. The corners of his eyes were itching with sleep crust, and he knew he probably looked worse than he felt.

Maybe at school he could get away without a shower every now and then, but something about drinking made him sweat more than usual, and his long-sleeve shirt was sticking to his skin uncomfortably.

Once he’d cleaned up, he trailed after the distant sound of the radio which led him all the way to the kitchen again. The house was bright and cheerful once more, the shadows from the night before long vanished with the morning sunlight. A glance through the windows told Donghyuck that today was one of those rare sunny days, and it felt at odds with the pit in his stomach.

“Can you cook?”

Donghyuck blinked at the question Chenle shot him as soon as he stepped into the room.

Chenle sighed when he didn’t respond right away, and pointed a spatula at Mark, who sat at the breakfast table and sipped from a mug while diligently not looking Donghyuck’s way. “He’s terrible at cooking, we can’t even let him near a microwave.”

“Where’s the chef?” Jisung asked, a quiet whine peeking through his voice. 

“Chefs deserve holidays, too,” Chenle told him seriously. His sage wisdom earned a thoughtful nod from his younger friend, who placed two more slices of bread in the toaster oven.

Jeno crossed the room to Donghyuck and pinched the sleeve of Donghyuck’s (now clean) shirt between his thumb and forefinger. “I want to show you something.”

He could feel Mark’s eyes on his back as he followed Jeno out the door on the other side of the kitchen. 

He’d underestimated the brightness of the day. Squinting his eyes was the only way he could manage to make out any shapes besides on bright blur, but his vision adjusted quickly.

As big flower beds full of flower beds became clear, he was glad that it did. 

Summer had long faded for the crisp air that sank deep into their bones as they stood on the porch, just as elegant and well-kept as the rest of the house, but the garden seemed to make up for that lack of warmth. Even though the plants would be clipped soon, or had already lost the vibrant flowers that surely existed when they were in bloom, they were still beautiful.

“Nice.” Donghyuck was never great with words.

Jeno nodded anyway. “I always like coming out here more than being inside the house. It’s so stuffy.”

“Like you shouldn’t really be touching anything,” Donghyuck mused. 

He thought the house was beautiful, but he agreed it was a little too well decorated for his comfort. He liked somewhere he could laze around and not worry about his clutter.

“Yeah,” Jeno agreed quietly.

Jeno was different from the other boys. Just from the way he carried himself, Donghyuck could tell that his confidence was self-made, not gifted to him from a long line of billionaire ancestors.

“It’s like a castle,” Donghyuck said, “Beauty and the Beast style.”

Jeno’s smile grew until Donghyuck was worried his face must hurt. “Who’s the Beauty?”

Donghyuck rolled his eyes. “Come on. You, obviously.”

Jeno laughed loudly, nudging Donghyuck’s arm with his elbow. 

Donghyuck shook his head, making a tsking sound with his tongue behind his teeth. “Fishing for compliments...you should be ashamed.”

“Are you the Beast?” Jeno asked. 

Donghyuck couldn’t help himself. “That’s obviously Jaemin.”

A pause. He’d overstepped again. 

But when he glanced at Jeno, he saw a smile still fixed on his face, amusement twinkling in his eyes. 

“Makes sense,” Jeno said. “Then you are…?”

“A talking object. Could I be anything more than a servant to our prince?”

Jeno punched Donghyuck’s shoulder but it was too gentle to mean much. Donghyuck knew Jeno could hit much harder if he wanted to. 

For a moment, Donghyuck considered asking. 

Whatever had happened with Jaemin in his room last night had left him still rattled. Even joking here in this pretty garden, his nerve endings felt on fire. But was Jeno the one to ask? If anyone knew Jaemin it was him, his roommate and...whatever else. 

It didn’t seem right, though, to disrupt the moment. He felt Jaemin’s hands in a phantom grip around his wrists, but could only see Jeno’s smile as he relaxed under the warm morning sun. 

“Hey, can I ask a question?”

Jeno nodded. When he tilted his head like that, waiting for the question, he looked like a curious dog. 

“Do you know who…” Donghyuck paused as he recalled the name written in the book, “who Camille is?”

Jeno blinked at him a few times, lips parted slightly. “I- yeah. That was Jaemin’s nanny or something when he was a kid.”

Oh. So he must be staying in the nanny’s old room.

It made sense that the room would be in Jaemin’s wing, but it didn’t explain why it had gone clearly untouched for so long, or why this woman had left her belongings behind. If someone cared enough to write her name inside her books, then she probably wouldn’t leave without them unless she absolutely had to. 

“Oh, thanks,” Donghyuck said, nodding. “Yeah, he said something about her, but I didn’t want to interrupt to ask, you know.”

Jeno raised his eyebrows. “He said something about her? To you?”

An obvious misstep. Thankfully, he was saved from answering when Jisung opened the door to call them inside to eat. 

Somehow Donghyuck managed to avoid Jeno’s questions for the rest of the day, sticking close to the two youngest members of their group. It wasn’t a challenge -- when Chenle and Jisung weren’t trying to suck him into a conspiracy theory, they were fun in the more regular sense.

He appreciated that Chenle was so open, although he understood Jisung’s caution. They balanced each other out nicely.

But the day turned to dusk and Donghyuck had yet to see Jaemin again. 

He was alive, at least, because Jeno took him lunch and didn’t come back for an hour, but he hadn’t come out of his room and no one else had gone in.

Despite the bruises that had appeared on Donghyuck’s skin, he still hoped Jaemin was okay. It surprised him, the first time he thought it, but it didn’t sit well with him that no one else had asked after their host, and had accepted his absence so easily.

Maybe they all knew what was going on, though. Donghyuck was still the odd man out.

They worked together to create something resembling dinner before venturing outside into the cool night.

The grounds were a different kind of beautiful at night -- the gardens lit up with small lights like fireflies. Beyond them the night was dark, unseeable, but Donghyuck kept his eyes trained on the boys around him and it didn’t matter so much that there was no way of telling what surrounded them. He wasn’t scared of the dark anyway, just what could be lurking there.

But he’d always had an overactive imagination, his mother said. 

“We should tell scary stories or something,” Donghyuck suggested once they were settled.

Chenle cheered his agreement, raising a glass, and even Jisung smiled, his gaze shifting between them across the flames licking up from the stone fire pit they surrounded.

Mark straightened up. He tried to meet Donghyuck’s eyes, but Donghyuck avoided the net of his stare valiantly. “I have a story.”

“Oh my god,” Chenle groaned, “not any good ones. Renjun’s the one with the good creepy stories.”

“No,” Jisung said, “Mark’s family has weird stories. Tell Donghyuck that one.”

Chenle groaned again, beginning to complain, but Jisung swatted at him until he quieted down.

‘That one?’ It must have been a fan favorite.

Mark cleared his throat and the garden itself seemed to still around them, the call of nature silenced and at attention.

“A long time ago,” he started, “there was a civilization not too different from the others. There were rulers and subjects, lords and peasants. Some people had power, others didn’t. But everything was in balance.

There was a princess or a duchess or a lady...the name changes depending on who tells it, but my family always called her the Lady. She was the kindest woman in the whole city and always made an effort to give help to everyone who had less than her.

She was the most loved woman, but there were people who still wanted to hurt her, because of her gifts, because of her ability to heal even the most fatal wounds and bring light to the darkness that had begun creeping into the city. Because of the threat, the court convinced her to use her gifts to bind herself to her best, most loyal guard -- a protector. Nothing could harm her while the guard lived.”

As he spoke, Mark’s voice took on a much grander tone. 

His words were clearly not his own, but passed down from generation to generation as a fairytale perfect for bedtime, repeated so much that they had become true. 

Donghyuck wondered what kind of family Mark had come from, where they had their own bedtime stories. Maybe it was just a millionaire thing.

“She grew older and fell in love,” Mark murmured. His smooth voice fell over them like a warm blanket. 

Despite Donghyuck’s efforts to ignore him the whole day, still tragically burned from their encounter the previous night, he found himself leaning in a little, his cheeks growing hot from the fire dancing between them.

“It would never last,” Mark continued, “the man had other plans.”

Jisung had heard this story before, having requested it specifically, but he still shifted to the edge of his seat, as caught in Mark’s voice as the rest of them.

“He wanted to kill her, but was also sick enough to want to do it in a special way, so he had a weapon created just for the killing.”

The air around them grew chillier, like the breath had been sucked out of Donghyuck’s lungs by some force, an icy giant hovering over the six of them.

It was then that he noticed Jaemin in the doorway, watching from behind the clean glass, his face hidden in shadow.

Donghyuck couldn’t look away from him, his eyes straining through the dark to meet their silent host’s.

Mark said, “He learned he couldn’t kill her. When he disappeared, some townspeople questioned it, but those who witnessed the blinding light that shook their houses and split the earth knew better than to pry into the Lady’s affairs.

Because they knew what his fate had been, when they saw the pit that had broken in the ground and swallowed half the estate. They never found the weapon. The Guard was hidden away for months while recovering from some strange sickness and when he recovered he and the Lady never parted again.”

He paused. Donghyuck dragged his attention away from Jaemin to Mark again, whose stare bored holes into the side of his head.

Smiling unevenly, Donghyuck asked, “Is that supposed to be scary? It doesn’t even have an ending.”

“They say the man had a curse on him,” Mark continued after another moment stretched around them, “and that he still wanders the Earth, hunting her descendants, trying to find those who don’t have anyone to protect them, so he can kill them and have his revenge.”

Jisung exhaled loudly, like he’d been holding his breath, and the spell Mark cast over the garden dissipated. The older boy sat back in his seat, smiling pleasantly.

It wasn’t fooling anyone.

He was waiting for a reaction, and the other boys who had been treated to this weird family lore had delivered before. Now it was Donghyuck’s turn.

“That’s a fucked up bedtime story,” Donghyuck said.

Mark shrugged. “Isn’t every story a little fucked up?”

“Well,” Donghyuck murmured, “I think this one might give me nightmares.”

Mark’s expression clouded, and he suddenly looked much, much older than he had just moments before. “Let’s hope not.”

When Donghyuck looked back to the house, Jaemin was gone.

The two youngest gremlins caught him on his way to bed. Jisung stood a step above Donghyuck on the stairs, Chenle a step below. Of the boys in the house, these two were the least imposing, so he waited, expecting a half-baked plan to hunt ghosts in the attic or something.

“I wonder how Renjun’s doing,” Chenle started, looking past Donghyuck to raise his eyebrows meaningfully to his younger counterpart.

Admittedly, Donghyuck had felt a thrum of disappointment shoot through his stomach when he learned Renjun wouldn’t be joining them, but he couldn’t say he’d thought much about him over the past two days.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck said anyway, “hope he’s not bored.”

“I wonder why he’s not here,” Chenle continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, with all the grace of a bulldozer.

“The…applications for university?”

Jisung scoffed above him. Donghyuck tilted his chin up to see the serious-looking scowl taking over his face. This kid was going to get wrinkles at a very young age if he kept scrunching his face up like that.

“Don’t be so easily misled,” Jisung said, lowering his voice after a quick glance up and down the stairs.

Donghyuck noticed now that their positions framing him on the staircase were more deliberate than just for trapping him.

Where Chenle stood, he could see up and down the hallway and into the doorway of the kitchen, where Jeno petered around putting leftovers away, and Jisung only had to move his head a few inches to the left in order to see down the hall that led to Jaemin’s wing of the mansion.

In this position, they could keep watch for each other while initiating a confusing conversation with the newbie, something said newbie both hoped wouldn’t be a regular occurrence and found kind of intriguing.

“Mark and Renjun know what they’re doing, but we’re not stupid,” Chenle murmured. “Think about it. Why wouldn’t Renjun come here, ever? Haven’t you noticed he and Jaemin never talk?”

He hadn’t. For all the attention he paid both boys, he hadn’t thought twice about their lack of interaction. For one thing, he himself steered clear of Jaemin, although unsuccessfully. He couldn’t blame anyone else for doing the same.

His answer must have been written on his face. Chenle clucked his tongue behind his teeth, shaking his head.

“Maybe Jaemin never invited him,” Jisung whispered, tilting his lips down a few inches from Donghyuck’s ear. “Maybe Renjun can’t go where he isn’t invited.”

His words swirled around Donghyuck’s brain until they caught on the hooks of his brief catalogue of memories involving Jisung and Chenle. Their conversation in the library was certainly interesting, but not very realistic. And these were young men obsessed.

“Are you saying,” Donghyuck started slowly, careful not to let any judgement bleed out onto the branch of friendship the two had extended to him.

He took a moment to gather himself, swallowed the laugh itching up his throat. “Are you saying that Renjun…is a vampire?”

Jisung hushed him.

Chenle smiled. “Now you’re using your head, Donghyuck.”

In the kitchen, a few cabinets closed, the sound cracking through the quiet halls like thunder. Jeno’s footfalls moved toward the staircase.

Chenle stepped up past Donghyuck, his hands tucked into his pockets, smile easy, all casual. Beside him now, Jisung’s expression smoothed out into familiar impassiveness.

“We’ll talk again soon,” Chenle said, nodding to him. “Have a good night.”

“You, too,” Donghyuck barely managed.

He watched the two climb the stairs before turning down the hall to their room, and leaned back against the dark polished railing.

“You okay?” Jeno asked when he appeared at the bottom of the staircase.

Donghyuck turned on his smile. “Yup. Just thinking. It’s a weird world, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jeno agreed, “it’s interesting.”

The third day, Donghyuck woke up long before anyone else and secluded himself to the library, determined to prowl through the stacks until the rest of the boys crawled out of bed.

He found a lot of first editions, a lot of old family journals he didn’t dare open, but nothing caught his attention the same way the nanny’s did. He fought the urge to collect it to read again and won.

At one point in the late morning Jisung wandered in and invited him to play video games, but he didn’t talk much besides that. Any trace of the previous night’s monster hunter vanished with the rising sun and he fell back into the role of teenage boy.

They didn’t see Chenle or Jeno until the afternoon, when they gathered around the kitchen to stuff their faces and make a mess that Jeno volunteered to clean yet again.

When Mark finally rose, it was already time to pack up and leave.

Admittedly, it was an anticlimactic final day of holiday, one that had Donghyuck itching to return to his homework. Still, he managed to slip the book from Jaemin’s nanny’s room into his bag, shuffling the books on the shelf until the gap left by the paperback wasn’t so noticeable.

He didn’t know why he took it. He usually kept a short lease on his impulses, but it was so easy to swipe it from up his pillow and tuck it under a dirty t-shirt before they left.

As they left, Donghyuck caught Jaemin staring at the bruise blooming over the inside of Donghyuck’s wrist.

“Just a migraine,” Jaemin explained when Jisung asked how he was feeling, the two day absence in his own home left unanswered.

The other boys accepted it. Donghyuck didn’t feel like he could.

At Norton again, they dispersed as easily as they gathered, heading to their respective rooms without a glance back, the certainty of seeing each other tomorrow the unbreakable foundation they built their lives on.

Jaemin walked two steps ahead of Donghyuck and Jeno as they went back to their dorm. As expected, he continued to his and Jeno’s shared room without stopping to chat in the hall.

“I’m glad you came with us,” Jeno said, standing behind Donghyuck as he fumbled with his keys.

“Me, too.”

It wasn’t a lie. It was one of the weirdest weekends Donghyuck had ever had, possibly even beating out the camping trip he took with his class in the eighth grade, where his chaperone offered to read his tarot card and one of his classmates tried to convince their whole cabin to participate in a blood oath.

But, as weird as it was, even with what had happened with Mark, with Jaemin, he enjoyed the free drinks and food at least. And hanging out with Jeno hadn’t been bad at all.

He turned to Jeno once he finally got his door unlocked. Hendery’s muffled voice filtered through the door. The moment he opened it, the weekend would officially be over and he’d be back to the usual.

Jeno smiled at him, brushing his unstyled hair back from his face with one hand. “If you want, I can show you some rugby tricks tomorrow.”

“Let’s start with the basic rules,” Donghyuck suggested.

Jeno smiled even wider, nodding. “The basics, then. I’ll meet you after practice. Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty.”

“I’ll leave my designer threads in the closet.”

Jeno chuckled. “Night.”

Donghyuck waved before stepping into his room, back into reality.

Hendery’s curious gaze fell on him and flitted away in one quick glance, his phone conversation continuing without a stumble.

Hendery, his roommate, Mark’s cousin -- Mark who wouldn’t kiss him while he was tipsy but would stare at him even when caught.

Donghyuck dropped his bag on the floor beside his bed and dove onto the mattress, content with leaving unpacking for tomorrow.

Maybe reality wasn’t as boring as it used to be.

The clock read 3:04 when Jeno blinked blearily awake, unintentionally grumbling as something dragged him from his slumber.

It took a few minutes for him to fully become aware of his surroundings, the clock glaring out a red 3:07 AM by the time he sat up in bed.

The room was dark and still, the same as it was when Jeno drifted off. But Jaemin’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back.

He curled his fingers into the blankets still covering his legs and held his breath as he listened. If he was quiet enough, he could hear if someone is walking down the hall.

He already knew that Jaemin didn’t just go to the bathroom, could see that the door was still locked, and they always left it open a crack when they were just going to piss in the middle of the night.

He slipped out of bed after a few moments of continued silence.

Sometimes Jaemin forgot his phone. After a quick check with the flashlight of his own, Jeno concluded that at least his roommate took his cell with him this time.

Jaemin was nearly an adult and, his age aside, he could handle himself. He’s never needed Jeno, was what Jeno told himself as he sat on his bed again, rubbing his knuckles over his temples in circles.

He should have laid down and gone back to sleep, but he stared at the clock until his vision went blurry and he had to get up and pace the room in order to stay awake.

He considered putting his shoes on and going to sit in the car, but it would be embarrassing if Jaemin came back by himself, not that it had ever happened before.

When the phone rang he waited ten long seconds before answering. “Jaemin?”

“I’m sending you my location,” Jaemin said.

He sounded worse than Jeno felt. He didn’t have the right to. Still, Jeno’s chest ached at the dull tone reaching him through the phone.

He wanted to ask. He couldn’t.

“I’m on my way,” Jeno said.

Jaemin didn’t reply, but didn’t hang up either.

Jeno gripped his phone tightly, pressing it close to his ear, and listened to him breathe as he shoved shoes on his feet and snuck out of the dorm.

He only looked at his phone screen to see Jaemin’s shared location in his messages. It was so _far_. It also looked like the middle of a fucking _field_.

Jeno never turned the radio on during these middle of night drives, not even when it was to sneak out _with_ Jaemin instead of _for_ him.

When they would drive into the village to get drinks at the pub or buy ice cream cones and whine about their instructors – it doesn’t matter the reason, when Jeno was with Jaemin all he could think about was the air moving in and out of his lungs. He liked to hear it when Jaemin said something under his breath.

They would part ways soon enough – a year, maybe longer if he was lucky. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

The GPS in his car led him somewhere he’d never been before. The countryside rolled and dipped, each curve in the road bringing him somewhere new, somewhere that looked exactly like the last place.

His lungs seized in his chest as the GPS counted down the distance between the car and its destination.

And there he was, motionless and illuminated by Jeno’s headlights on the side of the road, like a specter that had come back to life and hadn’t realized it yet.

Jeno dropped his hand, letting his phone fall to his lap, but he let Jaemin be the one to hang up, watched him walk across the road to open the passenger side door and duck into the Prius.

Jaemin’s hair was mussed from sleep and wind. He wasn’t even wearing any shoes.

But he remained as casual as ever, offering Jeno the kind of smile Jeno hoped was only for him.

He hoped, but he wouldn’t lie to himself. No one wandered this far away by themselves, and he could only assume Jaemin’s had company.

“Let’s go home,” Jaemin said, his voice low to match the quiet engine, the quiet night.

Jeno didn’t protest. He couldn’t, just like how he couldn’t ask, how he doesn’t want to know the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone wants to help me edit the monster this is becoming, please let me know. my twitter is @jpseudy :)
> 
> i'm leaving for a study abroad semester in two weeks and i hope to have another part up before then, but it might be a little while after that. please stick around!


	5. pt. v

Renjun spent a lot of time by himself.

He didn’t mind; he had gotten accustomed to walking the grounds of Norton with only his own thoughts for company a long time ago. It wasn’t a preference, but he was glad he was able to spend time alone without starting to hate himself. It was a skill that not many sixteen and a half year olds had.

Over the past three and some years he’d also grown used to sticking close to Mark, but even that wasn’t going to last, no matter how much Mark tried to prove that it would. Mark was talented, and smart besides that, and he was going to go to a university very far from here and he would get everything he wanted.

Renjun didn’t mind. He had gotten used to being left behind.

The long weekend was a great time for Renjun to wander and think. With the hectic schedule of the past month and everyone getting adjusted to new classes and heavier course loads, the silence that swept over the school when the majority of the student body departed made Renjun a little uneasy.

Still, walking the halls for the hundredth-thousandth time was better than staring over a book he’d already read at Mark’s bed, waiting for him to come back.

He glanced over the glossy photographs hung on the walls, looking away before he could catch sight of the ones he was in. It was like something heavy would punch through his chest every time he wanted to look, and he didn’t want to know what it would feel like to really catch sight of his face hidden in the history of Norton Academy, school for the skilled, bright, and wealthy.

Renjun found himself in the infirmary before long. It was empty, as expected. There was probably very little reason for the school nurse to remain on campus unless he had some work to catch up on.

Renjun glanced over the files piled on the front desk and wandered aimlessly past the curtain into the back of the long room. He hopped up on one of the low cots to stretch out.

He wiggled his toes a little, looking down at his scuffed black shoes, just neat enough to still meet dress code. His gaze then traveled up the posters warning about the dangers of smoking and STIs and teen pregnancy, complete with little cartoons in various stages of health, and landed on the ceiling.

This was the brightest room in Norton. Like a hospital. Still, it was too dreary for Renjun’s taste. Too stiff.

He turned his head to the side, eyeing a chart on the other side of the room illustrating various levels of pain, from one to seven. 

Seven seemed like a strange number to end with, but it felt right at the same time.

The white curtains billowed from the rush of air entering the room as the heavy door pushed open. Voices and footsteps from the hall carried into the front of the room – one lighter and more energetic than the careful steps of the other.

Renjun remained hidden behind the curtain, but stilled regardless, his gaze fixed on the pain chart.

“Sounds like you should be on some sort of medication, but, again, I’m not a real doctor. I can’t prescribe you anything.”

“You don’t keep sleeping pills around for the little insomniacs?”

Shuffling of papers, a drawer opening and closing. “I have melatonin.”

The tips of Renjun’s ears tingled. 

He knew both men who had entered the room, although one was far more familiar to him than the other, though his voice had deepened and smoothed out over the years, far more mature than the first time he’d heard it.

Renjun stood from the cot and twitched the edge of the curtains aside so he could see them.

Ten (“Just Ten, please”) sat behind his desk, his hands folded on top of one of the lower stacks of files. He refused to wear the white coat or scrub style attire that matched his job description. His youthful face and impish grin confused strangers, especially new students who assumed him to just be an upperclassmen prowling the halls. They were always surprised to learn that the man was Head Nurse, in charge of all things injury and infirmary.

Once they had, the infirmary gained new loyal attendants, boys caught in his wild gaze who would fake injuries just to joke with their favorite faculty member.

Ten’s face tilted up so his eyes could rake over Sincheng’s face – the younger man who looked years his senior, with a near-permanent frown and dark creased bags under his eyes. Sicheng would be a kind and beautiful man if life hadn’t beaten him so badly.

Renjun’s stomach ached at the sight of him leaning against Ten’s desk, not for any sake of casualty, but because he was clearly so damn tired he couldn’t stand without the support.

“You’re saying there’s not one student here who takes anything stronger than melatonin?” Sicheng pressed.

A grimace flickered over Ten’s face. Any expression of discomfort looked foreign on him, but Renjun was hopeful that it might mean another simple and firm denial. It didn’t.

Ten ran his thumb along the edges of one of the folders in front of him as he glanced over Sicheng’s shoulder at the closed door. He looked like he desperately wanted it to open, to be caught.

“There’s a few.”

A beat. “Do you want me to guess?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult,” Ten said, kicking himself out from his desk to roll over to the medicine cabinets lining the back wall.

He perused what was available there before rolling his desk chair back to Sicheng. He set a bottle on the desk, then swiped it off again, twisting the cap off himself.

“Just one. For tonight only. And then you go see a real doctor.”

Sicheng held out his hand and Ten dropped a tiny pill into his cupped palm. As he closed his fingers over it, Renjun spied the label on the bottle, the name.

Something sad twisted his guts up into something like guilt, or regret. Someone his age, just sixteen and a half, shouldn’t know how to identify those feelings at all, if the world was fair. But the world wasn’t, and he’d been sixteen and a half for a while, long enough to know many things he shouldn’t.

Sicheng tucked his hands into the pockets of his black slacks. “I can’t believe you went to school for so long just to call yourself a fake doctor.”

“Says the man who went to school for so long just to teach theater to teenagers,” Ten returned.

They exchanged a smile that had Renjun glancing away.

He didn’t know where they’d met, just that Sicheng had returned a few years ago, dragging the nurse along behind him, their relationship both undetermined and fiercely close.

Ten was one of the only reasons Sicheng ever smiled anymore. The other was Yuta.

Renjun shuffled his feet down the corridor, hands tucked into his blazer pockets. The boys would be back soon, which meant he should have directed his path toward the dorms so that Mark wouldn’t have to come looking for him, but it still felt like his stomach was lodged halfway up his esophagus, and that wasn’t something even Mark could fix.

It never mattered much when he wanted to think – Mark developed the ability to find him in the maze of Norton years ago. Evolution so far had granted them survival, but the universe wasn’t in the habit of handing out favors, and their luck was bound to run out.

Mark found him outside the library, reading the dedication plaque that was older than either of them.

“It’s my last year,” Mark said.

Renjun didn’t have to look at him to know he was rubbing his fingers over the side of his opposite hand — his tell. He was trying not to say something that he didn’t need to anyway.

“I have under six months,” Mark said.

Renjun had forever, just not forever with him.

He knew this, had known for a long time, since they first locked eyes by the lake and Renjun took him under his wing. Knowing doesn’t make things better, knowing just makes things hurt. Everything tasted bitter.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with strangers for someone with a ticking clock.”

Mark exhaled in a short puff of air that might have tickled Renjun’s face if they were inches closer. But they kept that respectable distance, the distance neither of them had dared to cross in three, nearly four years.

“You like Donghyuck,” Mark reminded him.

“He’s different.”

“He’s just like you.”

God. He hoped not.

He shouldn’t have felt so wound up. Mark graduating and going to university somewhere far from here was inevitable.

He’d still have the other boys, for a few years, and then maybe he’d start over, or maybe he’d fade out again, return to the there-and-not state he lived before Mark appeared like the ghost of a life he’d once had.

“I’m still looking for answers,” Mark murmured, “I haven’t given up.”

_ Maybe you should _ , Renjun thought.

“Tell me about your holiday,” Renjun said instead.

He tilted his head to the side like a curious dog, caught the expression flashing over Mark’s face that told him something had happened he didn’t want him to know.

No worries – he’d find out eventually, whether he wanted to or not. It was his nature, and Norton’s nature, that met in the middle to spit out whatever horrible truths lay ahead of them.

The morning Donghyuck left for the airport, his mother cooked him breakfast – went all out with his favorite fruits and pastries, covered the table with enough food that they could have invited the whole neighborhood to join them, had they not disliked their neighbors so much.

Donghyuck grew up in a quiet neighborhood in a small town, where he could walk down the street and name everyone who had ever lived in each house, and for how long. Usually two or more generations filled each home, but Donghyuck had only ever lived with his mother, in their four-bedroom house, and knew that was one of the reasons some of his classmates would roll his eyes when he couldn’t afford to go on the field trip to a theme park in sixth grade.

He grew up needing nothing, and wanting a lot. His mom’s eyes on him when he opened his acceptance letter, both of them standing just inside the door, told him she always knew of his wanting, but wouldn’t speak of it.

He wondered, sometimes, if she was wanting, too, but had been saddled with motherhood and learned to accept it. He wondered if it was selfish that he couldn’t do the same.

He had sat at his usual seat at the table, one leg tucked under the other, and scooped food onto his plate although he knew he wouldn’t be able to swallow any of it. His throat burned with the nerves that rose like bile into his mouth, and his fingers trembled as he glanced at the clock every few minutes, counting away the time to when he would have to leave his childhood home, with no idea or intention for when he would come back.

His mom sat across from him, the miles of food that would not be eaten by either of them stretched between them. Neither of them spoke that morning, but the words she murmured in his ear at the airport still vibrated around his brain, bouncing off the walls of his head.

He hadn’t called her since he’d started school. He wasn’t sure if he could muster up the courage, or if he even wanted to.

_ I know what you’re looking for, _ she’d said,  _ be careful. _

He’d honestly just wanted her to say she was proud of him – that would have been enough.

  
  


Donghyuck hadn’t accounted for how exhausted he would be when he woke up for classes. Nerves started to pool in his stomach as he worked to lift his heavy eyelids, peering through sleep-crusted lashes into the dim light of the room.

Usually, Donghyuck was temporarily blinded by morning light when his alarm woke him, since Hendery always threw open the window curtains as soon as he rolled out of bed every day. Even Saturdays.

By the time he’d blinked his eyes awake, the realization that the curtains were still closed made him wonder if he was still asleep.

Hendery’s bed was somewhat neatly made, as always, the duvet pulled up, but not really tucked into the corners or into the crack between the mattress and the wall. He wasn’t in the room, however, and his backpack still laid on top of his desk.

As Donghyuck mulled over the curtains, Hendery pushed open the door, slipping inside quietly.

“Morning,” Hendery murmured, his already low voice deepening at the level he spoke. “How are you feeling?”

Donghyuck just blinked at him in response. Was he dreaming?

He watched his roommate set a mug on the corner of Donghyuck’s nightstand. Steam rose from it, a bobbing teabag in the water.

Donghyuck stared at it, faintly registering in the back of his mind the image of Hendery sitting in his bed while studying late at night, sipping from the same mug and silently ignoring Donghyuck’s presence.

“Um,” Donghyuck said. “Thank you?”

Hendery sat on the edge of his own bed, offering him a small smile. “Welcome. I just wanted to…make sure you were okay after…”

“After…” Donghyuck repeated slowly.

“After this weekend?”

Oh. He  _ had  _ drank a lot over the past few days, and if that was normal for the boys, maybe that was normal for everyone else over the holiday, too. He wasn’t sure what had sparked this sudden doting behavior from his roommate who had spent the week before pretending he didn’t exist at all, but he wasn’t going to question it, especially not this early in the morning.

“Thanks,” Donghyuck murmured again. He meant it. 

He picked up the mug to sip at its contents, wrinkling his nose when the hot water burned the tip of his tongue. The warm surface of the cup felt nice under his fingertips.

“Yeah, well, I get how it can be,” Hendery said. “So, if you want to sit with us in the dining hall again, that’s fine.”

Donghyuck raised his brows as he blew on the tea in an attempt to cool it off. Had someone said something to him? Did they not want him to sit with them anymore? 

He racked his brain to find anything off from his interactions the day before, but apart from Jaemin who always hated him, and Mark (who...well, he’d deal with that later), he couldn’t come up with anything strange.

“Are you and Mark really cousins?” Donghyuck asked, instead of asking anything actually relevant.

Hendery made a face Donghyuck could only assume to be 90% disgust. 

“Distantly. Like, very distantly. Not even real cousins.”

Hendery seemed to be the only student at Norton immune to Mark’s inherent charm -- possibly the only person at all, including their teachers and the staff.

Donghyuck didn’t know how exactly to respond to Hendery’s distaste with Mark, since the only uncomfortable anecdote he could share was how he’d tried to make a move on him, and that was kind of inappropriate to tell one of Mark’s family members, however ‘distant.’

“Weird,” he said instead. They’d have to find something else to bond over.

Hendery didn’t seem to notice. “Hope you’re not too traumatized, is all.”

“Um. I’m not,” Donghyuck murmured, pausing to finally take a sip of the now just warm tea, “I had fun, actually.”

He set Hendery’s mug back onto his nightstand, admiring the simple hand painted design on it. It looked like one of the projects someone could paint on a date at a ceramic art store. He wondered who had made it for him.

When he met Hendery’s eyes again, his roommate was squinting at him, his brows furrowed together, the concentrated look creasing his forehead. 

Donghyuck blinked. “Uh. What?”

“So, you’re still associating with him, then?” Hendery asked.

“Him? Um, Mark? Um. I mean. I guess so?”

Hendery huffed a heavy breath through his nose, standing abruptly. He grabbed his backpack and swung it onto his shoulder with enough force to make Donghyuck flinch.

“Wash that when you’re finished, please,” Hendery said coolly. 

He left without waiting for a response, leaving Donghyuck alone, still just as confused as he was when he’d woken up a few minutes earlier. 

Maybe the sudden switch in temperature was something that ran in the family, he mused, since both Hendery and Mark seemed skilled and running cold so soon after warming up.

Mr. Nakamoto’s smile seemed to brighten when his gaze landed on Donghyuck as he entered the classroom that afternoon. 

Donghyuck smiled back.

“You look well rested, Donghyuck,” Mr. Nakamoto said, a glint in his eyes as he handed him a packet of paper.

“Really relaxing weekend,” Donghyuck hummed, starting toward his seat. But instead of the desks being in their regular formations in rows, they were grouped in fours. He stopped abruptly, eyeing the room with vague suspicion.

Jeno was already sitting by the shelves in the back of the room. He raised his hand, waving with a beatific smile gracing his face.

“Over here, Hyuck!” Jeno called.

He slipped between the grouped desks to drop down into the empty seat beside the blond.

“What is all this?” Donghyuck asked.

“Group project,” Jeno said. He pointed to the packet in Donghyuck’s hand and his own laid on his desk in front of him.

Donghyuck looked down at the paper for the first time, scanning the instructions. In the top corner, his name was written, along with the three names of his group members.

_ Donghyuck, Jaemin, Jeno, Yangyang. _

Either Mr. Nakamoto hated him, or this was a prank.

The legs of the chair in front of him screeched as they were dragged across the floor. Donghyuck looked up, meeting Yangyang’s gaze with his own.

“Hi,” Yangyang said. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Hey,” Donghyuck said, pained.

The small smile vanished from Yangyang’s expression, and he hunched over his packet, busying himself with reading the instructions.

Jaemin’s arrival at their group was much more succinct. He sat with seconds to spare before the bell, smiling gratefully at Jeno who passed him his own water bottle for a sip without being asked.

Jaemin was kind of handsome when he smiled, not that Donghyuck would ever say it aloud.

They were spared from small talk as Mr. Nakamoto launched into his introduction of the project, a presentation on an ancient civilization of their choosing from the list, first come first served, with a minimum of twenty minutes between them, and a five-minute question and answer session with the class to follow. The contents of their presentations would roll over into exam questions for their final exams.

When he paused for questions, Jaemin raised his hand, expression serious.

“Yes,” Mr. Nakomoto hummed, “Jaemin?”

“How were the groups determined?” Jaemin asked. “I only ask because one of my group members lacks the educational background of the rest of us, so I’m worried that the division of work will be unfair.”

Donghyuck felt his mouth go dry, heat creeping up his neck to his cheeks and setting his face aflame. It was pretty ballsy of Jaemin to bring his pettiness into this public space, especially for him to attempt to embarrass him in front of other students.

There were a lot of heavy books in arms reach. Donghyuck bet he could whop Jaemin over the head with one before even Jeno could react.

In fact, as he slid his gaze over to look at Jeno out of the corner of his eye, he wondered if Jeno would try to stop him at all.

The blond’s jaw was tight, his shoulders rigid and back straight as he stared at his roommate, who ignored the tittering and whispers around the room as he waited for an answer from their teacher.

The response came quickly.

“I divided groups based on each members strengths and how you all complement one another. I think you’ll find that the members of your group in particular each have a strong background in the subject, especially your peers whose attendance here is based solely on their own academic merit and not any of their other…privileges,” Mr. Nakamoto replied. “But if you’re worried about the division of work, you’re free to complete the project on your own so that the grade is based on your work alone. Does that interest you?”

Donghyuck watched as Jaemin’s pleasant smile grew sharper around the edges, his eyes squinting briefly at their teacher. He was sure the boy was biting his tongue in an attempt to hold back words that would only get him sent to the Dean’s Office.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he said finally.

Mr. Nakamoto smiled. “Glad to hear it. Let me know if you change your mind and we can discuss your concerns privately. Now, everyone talk to your groups!”

Under the table, Donghyuck’s nails dug into the flesh of his palms as his gripped his hands into tight fists, but began relaxing as chatter rose in volume around the room and he no longer felt the burn of his classmates’ eyes on him.

Across from him, Yangyang exhaled quietly. He kept his eyes on his paper.

“Any preferences?” Jaemin asked coolly. He flipped through his packet with disdain.

Jeno remained silent until Donghyuck nudged him with his elbow, and then spoke only to mutter out his first choice for their presentation. 

When they’d all agreed, Yangyang shot up from his seat, grabbing his backpack on the way to tell Mr. Nakamoto of their project choice. He stood at his desk a few moments longer while their teacher wrote him a note and disappeared out the classroom door without a second look back.

Mr. Nakamoto stopped Donghyuck on his way out, making brief small talk with him about his holiday as the rest of the students filtered out of the room. Donghyuck noticed how Jeno brushed Jaemin off as he left, staying at least two steps ahead of him, his expression steely.

Mr. Nakamoto looked bemused by Donghyuck’s weekend experience, minus the drinking and Jaemin’s apparent possession. “You went to his house for the whole holiday, but he still treats you like...”

“Shit?” Donghyuck finished.

Mr. Nakamoto tsked, but didn’t correct him. “Why invite you, then?”

Donghyuck shrugged, adjusting his backpack straps just to have something to do with his hands. “He’s weird.”

Mr. Nakamoto nodded thoughtfully before leaning back against his desk. “Well, the offer goes for you, too. You can work on the project on your own, if it would be easier for you.”

Donghyuck shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ll deal. Jeno and Yangyang are nice.”

“Are you interested in any extra credit, then?”

That definitely piqued his interest. The homework load was insane already, but if there was a way for him to supplement it with something extra, he would feel better about the couple of bad quiz grades he’d already managed to get.

“There’s another civilization I haven’t put on the list,” Mr. Nakamoto said as he rounded his desk and started writing him a note for his next teacher. Students for his next class had begun entering already. “Stop by after your next class is over and I’ll explain more.”

Donghyuck nodded, eager. “I’ll do that.”

“Great,” Mr. Nakamoto hummed, “see you then.”

Donghyuck left the room quickly, not wanting to be  _ too _ late to his next class, which was becoming a habit with how often he stopped to chat with Mr. Nakamoto, but someone called his name as he hurried, half-jogging, down the hall.

He stopped in surprise, watching Mark head toward him.

Mark pushed his glasses up and offered Donghyuck a slight smile. “Are you busy right now?”

Donghyuck eyed the thick books Mark held in each arm. “Um. I’m going to class. Aren’t you?”

Mark shook his head. “Study period, and then my class after is canceled.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck said, “well.”

“Skip with me.”

Donghyuck blinked. The last time Mark spoke to him directly Donghyuck had run out of the bathroom.

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” Donghyuck said when he couldn’t come up with any better response.

Mark smiled, doing a little wiggle down to shift his books up higher in the crooks of his elbows, somewhat unsuccessfully. Donghyuck reached out and took one before it could fall and break Mark’s foot.

“Thanks,” Mark said. “I can get Ten to write an excuse for you.”

_ Who’s Ten? _ Donghyuck wanted to ask, but for some reason he was finding it difficult to manage any words at all.

Mark’s blazer was unbuttoned. The strap of his leather bag slung over his shoulder was threatening to slip off at any moment. He was clearly on his way somewhere, given the books in his arms, but he waited patiently for a response, his eyes kind despite their last real encounter.

“Okay,” Donghyuck said dumbly.

He took another book from Mark, which allowed him to keep his bag from falling. The spine of the book read  _ The History of Necromancy in Europe _ .

Mark started off again, Donghyuck following without question, although he quickly realized they were heading to the library.

“Do you spend a lot of free time in here?” Donghyuck whispered as they snuck past the librarian for his sake – no note. “Why not yours and Renjun’s room? Wait, come this way.”

Mark stopped short, his expression curious as Donghyuck led him to his own favorite spot. He set his books down on the table, gaze travelling briefly to all the names on the shelf.

“Um. Renjun’s really private. And I like the library.”

“Nerd,” Donghyuck teased.

Mark rolled his eyes.

“What’s with the death stuff?” Donghyuck asked after a moment.

“Oh,” Mark laughed, voice low as he tried to hide the sound behind his arm.

Donghyuck waited. His own lips curled upward as he watched him, clasping his hands together between his knees under the table.

“Sorry,” Mark murmured, smiling widely still, “no one ever asks. You surprised me.”

“I’m full of surprises,” Donghyuck murmured.

“Oh, I believe you.”

Donghyuck flushed, wishing he could will away the heat that so easily appeared under his skin. “So, are you trying to raise something from the dead?”

“He’s just obsessed with creepy shit,” Renjun said as he rounded the corner.

Donghyuck jumped a little, startled by his sudden appearance, but was glad to see him anyway.

“Speak of the devil,” Mark said.

“Hi,” Donghyuck said.

“Hey, Donghyuck,” Renjun said. He sat at one of the empty chairs and both of them turned in their seats to face him better.

“Did you get your applications done?” Donghyuck asked.

Renjun glanced at Mark before shrugging. “Not yet. Working on it, I guess.”

“Oh, cool, where do you want to go?”

“I heard you, Jaemin, and Jeno are working on a project together,” Mark interjected.

“Ah, yeah,” Donghyuck said, grimacing.

Renjun snorted, reaching out to slide one of Mark’s books across the table. He flipped through it quickly, curious, but Mark swatted at his hand, probably to keep him from ripping the fragile looking pages.

“Sounds fun,” Mark said.

“Sounds like hell,” Renjun said.

“Yeah,” Donghuck sighed.

Mark scrunched his nose up briefly, wrinkling the space between his brows. “Jaemin’s just—”

“Difficult?” Donghyuck offered.

“Private,” Mark said.

Private? He supposed there could be something there. Chenle and Jisung were easy to get along with, offering their friendship with open arms as soon as he’d been invited to sit with them at breakfast, although they’d been kind enough even before, when they’d met in Theater. Jeno, too, was fun to talk to, and Donghyuck considered him, at least, a genuine friend here.

Jaemin was cold. If anything, Mark and Renjun were the private ones. As a group, the boys seemed to revolve around Mark, yet vacillated wildly between forgetting Renjun existed and having a hyper-awareness of him.

When Donghyuck first thought about it, he felt like an ass. The thing was, he’d already started to realize, Mark demanded so much attention that his seemingly closest friend easily faded into the background, even when they were sitting right beside each other.

He couldn’t say all that, not only because it would be asshole behavior, but because he could still barely believe the phenomena himself, not with the way Renjun’s gaze felt sharp on his cheek. Maybe he had a bizarre skill in appearing without warning, but sitting beside him was like being cloaked in a thick layer of ease.

Mark could make his heart skip a beat, but Renjun loosened the tension in his chest and let him breathe again.

Donghyuck nearly laughed at himself – the melodrama of his feelings for boys he’d known only a week. That was the way about them, though, how they all crept into his thoughts and made a home for themselves. Without knowing it, he’d let them in, and now he wasn’t sure if he could get rid of them even if he wanted to. He was stuck.

Even with scary, cold Jaemin.

Donghyuck fixed a smile on his face and shrugged off their conversation. He grabbed one of Mark’s books and leaned his chair back on its legs as he inspected the font of the foreword.

“So, necromancy. Are you in Chenle and Jisung’s club of the occult?”

“Of the what?” Mark asked, a little startled.

“The occult?” Donghyuck repeated, glancing up at him with a quirked brow.

“Oh,” Mark breathed out. Already, his previous discomfort with Donghyuck’s reaction to Jaemin had vanished and he gave him a relieved smile. “I thought you said- anyway. I’m not. Um.”

“I am,” Renjun said. “That’s how we met. They were ghost hunting and I ran into them. Thought I’d join in.”

The most Donghyuck had dabbled into any area of this was knowing his Western astrological sign. Now he was surrounded by these guys obsessed with the fantastic.

“Why are you into this stuff? It’s just so…unrealistic.”

Mark glanced at Renjun as if he expected to share a look with him, but Renjun’s eyes remained on Donghyuck.

“What makes you think that?”

Donghyuck shrugged. “It just seems so improbable. I guess to some people it’s real, just because they believe in it.”

“A lot of things are improbable but real,” Renjun pointed out after a moment of consideration. “Isn’t it just by chance that out of all the people in the world who could come to Norton, we did, and met each other, and are talking now? A lot of other things could have happened instead.”

“I’m not sure that’s what chance is,” Mark murmured.

“And that’s all just people,” Donghyuck said, “doing stuff, making decisions. That’s not the same thing as paranormal supernatural shit.”

Renjun shook his head, like neither of them were getting his point. “Sometimes you have to accept that you don’t understand everything, and that the world is weird.”

Mark clapped his hand to Renjun’s shoulder, squeezing it. “I think you’re overreacting again. Donghyuck doesn’t have to believe in ghosts if he doesn’t want to.”

The look Renjun directed to his friend was withering, but the softness of Mark’s gaze didn’t waver. Watching their interaction suddenly felt like a level of intimacy Donghyuck hadn’t reached with either of them, and he looked over Mark’s shoulder instead, scanning the titles of books without really reading them.

Maybe this was why Mark had rejected him, after all. Maybe it wasn’t because he was ugly, which, honestly, he knew he wasn’t, but because he already had someone else.

They’d both seemed intrigued by him and, he had to admit, it was flattering, especially for boys the rest of their peers had labelled uninterested. But, maybe that was the game. Maybe Donghyuck was shiny and new.

While this had started to feel like what Donghyuck had been looking for, his mom was right. He should be careful.

And if he wanted to be careful, he had to stop this train of thought before it left the station. He cleared his throat, pretending to check the time on his watch until they both looked back toward him. “So, besides seances, what do you guys like to do?”

“Renjun skated,” Mark answered without hesitation.

Renjun made some vague noise of protest in the back of his throat.

“Not anymore?” Donghyuck asked.

“I don’t have a board anymore,” Renjun replied once he’d recovered. He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “And Mark keeps getting his taken away.”

“What?” Donghyuck murmured. “But he’s such a golden boy. You’re saying he can actually get into trouble?”

Renjun smiled. It was stupid how nice he looked when he smiled.

_ No, _ Donghyuck thought,  _ no, no _ .

“Surprisingly, sometimes his charm fails him,” Renjun said. “Yuta-”

“Mr. Nakamoto,” Mark cut in quietly.

“-sees right through him,” Renjun finished.

Mr. Nakamoto definitely didn’t take bullshit from students, judging by his reaction to Jaemin’s unique brand of bullshit not long ago. Still, it was almost hard to believe that Mark’s demeanor was fake.

Even now, Mark only looked genuinely flustered, shaking his head a few times. 

“It’s not like that,” he said, “I’m not- Mr. Nakamoto doesn’t like anyone, right? But I’m not even...yeah.”

“He likes me,” Donghyuck teased, kicking him under the table without much force and shocking a laugh out of Mark, which only made him feel more smug.

Renjun still hadn’t stopped smiling, although it had fallen into a subtle curve over his lips as he regarded Donghyuck. “You must be pretty special, then.”

“Just pretty,” Donghyuck said.

He thought he heard the hum of agreement, but it was drowned out by Mark’s abrupt coughs. His ears rang from the sound, even if it was in his imagination.

“How do you know he likes you?” Mark asked after recovering, assisted by a few slaps on the back from Renjun.

“He always talks to me,” Donghyuck said, shrugging. “And he wants me to do extra credit or something? I’m supposed to meet with him before dinner, I guess.”

Mark glanced down at the highly reflective face of his watch. “Isn’t that now?”

“No,” Donghyuck looked at his own wrist, blinking at the time, “is it?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Mark said.

“What an embarrassing thing to say,” Renjun murmured.

Donghyuck huffed out a laugh as he pushed his chair back, palms pressed flat to the table surface. “I’ll, um, see you guys?”

“Duh,” Renjun said.

Mark looked up at him. “Dinner?” 

“Duh,” Donghyuck parroted. He flashed them a smile before ducking away from the table. He couldn’t even find it within himself to be completely ashamed of how his smile remained fixed on his face, even as he ran through the halls.

“Sorry I’m late!” Donghyuck shouted as he shoved open the door, breathing in and out deeply through his nose to catch his breath from his sprint. He caught the door handle before it could slam into the bookshelf tucked behind it.

Mr. Nakamoto looked up from the stack of papers on his desk. For a brief moment, he looked annoyed by the loud disruption, but the expression faded from his face and was replaced by a pleasant smile.

He clicked his pen a few times and motioned for Donghyuck to pull a chair up to his desk. “It hasn’t been too long. Don’t worry about it. Sit.”

Donghyuck did, dropping his backpack on the floor beside him. Now that he was closer to the objects covering Mr. Nakamoto’s desk, he could see how cluttered it was.

The large wooden surface was filled with knick knacks that seemed to reflect Mr. Nakamoto’s global travels. Some of them looked near ancient, although they could have just as easily been mass produced that way to be an easy sell to charmed tourists.

“I was caught up with a few friends,” Donghyuck explained.  _ Friends? _

“Friends?” Mr. Nakamoto repeated. “I’m glad to hear you aren’t spending anymore time by yourself. Who are the lucky young men?”

“Oh,” Donghyuck said. He felt a little shy now, unsure if this would get back to Mark and Renjun and they might think it was amusing, that he considered them friends after only a few days. He didn’t have a better term for them, though. “Mark Lee and them.”

Mr. Nakamoto’s surprise was genuine, which only made Donghyuck feel worse. He felt his fingers curl up into fists in his lap and had to make a conscious effort to relax his hands.

It apparently wasn’t as subtle as he’d thought. Mr. Nakamoto shook his head, leaning forward at his desk and clasping his hands over the papers in front of him.

“Pardon my surprise. I just thought, maybe, after the little show earlier today…”

“They’re not all like that,” Donghyuck paused, hesitating, “I don’t think so, anyway.”

“How about your roommate?” Mr. Nakamoto asked.

“I don’t think we’ll be best friends, but. It’s fine.”

He must have heard the tiredness in Donghyuck’s voice because he dropped it, sitting back in his chair again with an easy smile.

“Well, I have to say, you’re pretty persistent, Donghyuck. I admire that you’re still trying to make this all work.”

Donghyuck tried not to let that feel like the double edged sword it was and focused in on the admiration part. It was easy to see that Mr. Nakamoto liked him as a student; otherwise, he wouldn’t have offered up extra credit or checked in on him so much. He wondered if his teacher had been in his position, once, and had had to try to fit in with the strange and opulent world that was opening up in front of him each day at Norton.

“So far, you’ve really impressed me with your dedication to your studies, even if your quiz grades have been...lacking. I think it would show the scholarship committee that you really deserve your aid next year if you take on an extra academic project like this.”

“There isn’t any way I can say no, then, is there?” 

Mr. Nakamoto smiled, clearly pleased that Donghyuck had recognized the underlying tons of his offer. “Not really. But I think you’ll enjoy it. You may even find it helpful.”

He doubted it. He’d never been the biggest fan of history, and while he supposed the subject could be useful for future politicians or teachers, that wasn’t the life he’d quite imagined for himself. 

But the fact that the scholarship committee might see his average grades and rescind his aid was more than enough to motivate him into agreeing. So he did. 

“Okay,” Donghyuck murmured, “What do I need to do?”

Mr. Nakamoto’s perfect smile spread across his lips. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you the ropes. This is actually my area of research, so you’ll be guided by an expert.”

Donghyuck mustered a smile from somewhere deep within himself. “Great.”

His teacher stood, rounding the desk to cross the room. Donghyuck twisted in his seat to watch him. 

“You can start with the basics,” Mr. Nakamoto said, selecting a few old books from the shelves lining the room, “just some light reading. The topic is...highly controversial, but I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“What’s controversial about it?” 

“Well,” Mr. Nakamoto said, still smiling like this was the most exciting part of his day so far, “many academics don’t believe this civilization really existed. Historians have written it off as myth, despite all the obvious evidence pointing toward its existence, like ceremonial relics and records of contact with other civilizations.”

Donghyuck eyed the books Mr. Nakamoto set on the desk in front of him. This was going to be a lot to dig through. “Oh. Weird.”

“Yes. Definitely ‘weird,’” Mr. Nakamoto murmured. “Think you can skim through these in the next few weeks?”

“I’ll try?” Donghyuck answers, doubtful. For a moment, he wanted to explain that he was already involved in Theater Society, and now trying out for rugby, so it wasn’t like he had a lot of free time, but he was beginning to feel like Mr. Nakamoto didn’t really give a shit about any of that. 

“We can meet next week to check your progress and discuss the contents of your project moving forward, then,” Mr. Nakamoto hummed. “I think you’ll really get something out of this, Donghyuck. The world makes a lot more sense once your eyes are fully opened.”

“Right,” Donghyuck said slowly. He took the books to slip them into his bag, noting that the titles reflected ancient mythology, like Mr. Nakamoto had said. 

His life was rapidly becoming fully inundated with ridiculous belief systems, but, he supposed he didn’t really have a choice. Maybe if he didn’t want to actually do the work, he could pass it off to the supernatural twins, Chenle and Jisung. They’d probably eat this shit up. 

“See you tomorrow, Donghyuck,” Mr. Nakamoto said as he sat behind his desk again. “Email me if you have any urgent questions.”

“Right,” Donghyuck said again. He stood, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. “I’ll get right on that...I mean, I’ll get started as soon as I...can.”

Dread had already started filling his gut as he left the classroom, his shoulders weighed down by the new books in his possession.  _ This _ had definitely not been what he was looking for.

_ But _ , he thought as he turned down the hall toward the cafeteria, where he knew a seat would be waiting for him between Jeno and Mark,  _ maybe  _ this _ was _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty ty ty to toast (toastily) for helping me with this part!! 
> 
> i'm sorry it took so long to finish, i've been so busy, but i hope this is enough to make up for it until next time!
> 
> my twitter is @jpseudy if anyone feels so inclined to come by and bark at me about this or anything!


	6. pt. vi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am back! this is long (for me)! i've read it over so many times i'm not sure what it says anymore!
> 
> thanks to EverybodyKnowsIt for being an Angel and listening to me talk about this so much and helping me <3
> 
> the next part is going to have a looooot of stuff in it but it'll be a while before i'm able to finish it w/ like....school and life and stuff -- to anyone sticking w/ me here thanks for doing so ! i appreciate you !

Sweat dripped down the bridge and off the tip of his nose. His lips tasted salty when he flicked his tongue out over them, and he hoped they’d take a break soon so he could gulp water until it sloshed around in his stomach during their cool down lap. It wouldn’t even be that uncomfortable, since at least then he’d know he wasn’t going to pass out from dehydration on the way back to his dorm building. 

When Jeno and Lucas told him he should try out for rugby, Donghyuck had thought it’d be a fun activity, a good chance to make friends, like Theater Society. But Theater was more about doing improv ridiculous enough that it made Jisung spit his water out onto the back of Sicheng’s neck — (he’d been successful once, while panting like a dog on all fours in front of a senior, and he was dying to make it happen again.) 

So far, rugby was just kicking his ass. 

Begrudgingly, he had to admit it was cool to spend more time with Jeno, and Lucas wasn’t half-bad either. Making the team hadn’t been easy, considering his lack of knowledge about the game in general, but he had one over on everyone else trying out, considering they were all a few years younger than him. 

He’d had fairly decent times on the track team at his last school, not that it was anything he could boast about under normal circumstances. Up against a group of fourteen-year-olds, his longer legs and stamina had the advantage. Practicing with his new teammates who were, in general, much larger, stronger, and faster than him, could have been disheartening, if Jeno wasn’t so encouraging.

“You’ll get these in no time,” Jeno had quipped in the locker room, flexing his bicep at Donghyuck before laughter pealed from his lips. 

It would have been impossible not to match Jeno’s smile, so Donghyuck didn’t even try to resist.

Donghyuck was folded in half, hands on his knees, trying not to heave into the grass at the edge of the pitch, when he felt eyes on him. At first, he thought it was a couple other members of the team, which would make sense, but this was a stare that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, his skin prickling uneasily.

He stood up straight, although his stomach churned at the movement, and swiped his arm over his forehead to push his sweaty hair off his face. 

Apart from the players and coaches, there weren’t many other students around the pitch and the bleachers were nearly empty.

Donghyuck wasn’t stupid, though, and two boys sat on wall at one end of the field, where Donghyuck himself had sat a few weeks ago, where they had shown him.

At this distance, it would have been difficult to recognize them, had it not been for the book in Mark’s hands, and Jaemin’s excellent posture. 

Whose stare had caught his attention?

Coach blew his whistle to call the rugby players together to debrief, so Donghyuck pushed the question aside until he was headed in their direction, dismissed for the day.

Lucas walked with him, his arm slung over Donghyuck’s shoulders. It didn’t matter much that the taller player was shining from a layer of sweat that covered his skin, because Donghyuck was, too. 

Besides, it was impossible to complain about Lucas at all. His eagerness to be kind and enthusiastic dug into your skin and infected you -- all Donghyuck could do was nod and laugh, allowing the light teasing as Lucas asked if he’d ever stop looking like he was going to barf in the middle of practice.

Jeno reached the pair on the wall before them.

“Where are the monster hunters?” Jeno asked.

Mark closed his book, keeping his place with his index finger wedged between the pages. “Getting updated with the newest ghoul news.”

“Oh, man,” Lucas said, absentmindedly patting Donghyuck’s shoulder, “all that creepy horror stuff. You know who would love to join their club? Dejun! He’d totally be into that. You guys should put in a good word for him.

_ Who the fuck is Dejun? _

“For sure,” Donghyuck said, eyeing how Jaemin kicked at the palms of Jeno’s hands as the athlete tried to tie his roommate’s shoelaces together. 

Jeno smiled up at Jaemin so widely it must have hurt.

“Cool, cool,” Lucas hummed, clapping his palm to Donghyuck’s back once more, “I’ll see you later! Bye, Jeno!”

“Bye!” Jeno called without looking back. He clambered up onto the wall beside Jaemin and peering over his arm at the notebook pages Jaemin half-hid with this hand. 

Jaemin elbowed him in the side and Jeno hooked his right ankle with Jaemin’s left, unbothered.

Donghyuck tore his gaze from them to look back at Mark. “Have fun?”

“What, watching you play?” Mark asked. “Sure. You’re fast.”

“Thanks,” Donghyuck said, out of habit more than real gratitude. 

Mark used his free hand to push his hair off his forehead. For a moment, Donghyuck let himself think that it was a nervous fidget, the type of motion one might make while talking to their crush, but then the reality of their relationship came back to him. Mark had rejected him once already, and Donghyuck wasn’t itching to feel that same burn again.

He stepped back half a foot as Mark hopped down. The older boy cleared his throat as they faced each other.

It took a moment for Mark to speak, clearly churning words around and around his head to form the perfect sentence. Donghyuck raised his brows as he watched him think, curiosity piquing. 

“Lucas is nice,” Mark said finally.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck said, dragging out his vowels, “he is.”

“Does anyone want to get ice cream?” Jeno cut in, waving his hand to get their attention, and in the process leaned in front of Jaemin. His hand was braced on the bricks on the opposite side of Jaemin’s thighs, practically knocking him in the chin with his head as he called over to Mark and Donghyuck.

Donghyuck shook his head. “I have work to do tonight for History.”

Jeno stuck his tongue out to show his disapproval, but treated his friend with a smile before anyone could doubt his playfulness. “Mark?”

“I have an exam tomorrow,” Mark said. He looked somewhere over Donghyuck’s shoulder, his expression grim, and Donghyuck glanced behind himself to see nothing but a few lingering teammates on the pitch, Lucas laughing loudly at something one of the first years had said, judging by the proud, somewhat awed look on the kid’s face as he gazed up at the senior.

“How about you?” Jeno hummed, leaning back again as he clapped a hand to Jaemin’s knee. “Some nice non-dairy ice cream?”

“Fine,” Jaemin said, “go shower first.”

Jeno smiled widely as he hopped down from the wall. 

They all watched him go as he jogged across the pitch toward the building that housed the locker rooms, holding his helmet in one hand, blond hair flopping in sweaty pieces as he went.

A quiet thud alerted Donghyuck to someone having jumped down from the wall. When he turned, Jaemin stood in front of him, surveying him silently.

They were close enough that Donghyuck felt the same prickling unease that had dug into his skin at Jaemin’s house, when the other boy had gripped his arms and looked at him like he was from another world -- and not in the cute, romantic way Donghyuck had always imagined someone would one day look at him.

“What?” Donghyuck asked. It was a struggle not to just spit the words out, the back of his tongue bitter with the taste of what he felt about the boy in front of him.

“I hope you don’t think you matter,” Jaemin murmured, “you’re just something shiny and new.”

Donghyuck straightened his spine. “Listen. I know you think you’re hot shit, but you don’t own your friends. Stop being such an asshole, ‘cause, honestly, Jaemin, I really don’t care what you think about me.”

“Boys like you always care what people think about them,” Jaemin murmured.

Despite his cool exterior, something flashed behind Jaemin’s eyes that Donghyuck recognized as interest. Whether it was Jaemin’s own curiosity, or the thing inside him Donghyuck had met at Jaemin’s house, was another question.

Mark interrupted before they could get into another row. “You shouldn’t leave Jeno waiting.”

Jaemin didn’t reply to him, but shouldered his bag and walked past Donghyuck, without a second glance at either of them. 

Donghyuck turned his attention to Mark. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”

“Was that what I was doing?” Mark murmured. 

Donghyuck squinted at him as he adjusted his glasses, trying not to get too caught up in the faint flush of Mark’s cheeks. 

Mark cleared his throat. “Are you doing anything right now?”

“Yes,” Donghyuck said, as coldly as he could muster. He suppressed the urge to grin back at Mark when the older boy smiled patiently -- he knew it would come out too sharp, would give away too much, so he turned on his heel instead, determined to walk away with his head held high like a real Norton boy.

He felt Mark’s gaze on his back the whole time, searing into his skin through his rugby gear.

After his shower, Donghyuck planned to throw himself into his work, go full force until he couldn’t hold a pencil or Hendery turned the lights out on him. He tried not to look in the direction of his bed, worried that a glance at the comforting quilted blanket and fluffy pillow might cause him to throw himself onto his mattress instead.

He had yet to even crack open the book Mr. Nakamoto had given him, but it was alright. His young friends from Theater had volunteered to help him out. Donghyuck had grown too tired under the weight of his normal work to resist, or claim he had any amount of pride that could be more important than Jisung’s curious nose sticking itself between the pages. 

He was almost jealous of the younger boys’ ability to absorb anything and everything and be excited about it. Maybe he wasn’t as cut out for this life of intense prep-school academics as he thought he had been when he’d applied, desperate to leave home and be able to exercise the freedom he’d only just had a taste of. 

‘Freedom’ wasn’t the word his mother, his school principal, or his court-appointed counselor would have used, at least not a few years ago. But he hadn’t gotten that angry in a long time -- there was little to be angry about. He was just tired. Unfortunately exhaustion clearly wasn’t going to give him the same feeling that pulsed through his veins when his project partner, a vague acquaintance, got threatened at a party and Donghyuck had stepped up to put an end to it. 

Jaemin was cutting it close, though.

Settling into his desk chair, moving his notebooks and pencils until they were neat enough to be to his liking, Donghyuck delayed getting started long enough -- at least for Hendery, who cleared his throat every time Donghyuck slid his water bottle over the surface of the desk or fumbled around in his drawers. Still, the inspiration to study hadn’t yet struck. 

Through the window, Donghyuck watched the afternoon die. Boys spilled out across the lawn and headed for the dining hall together. The foliage of the oaks in the courtyard had begun to thin out, yellowing leaves scattered over the paths, although he knew from the pictures online that Norton hadn’t yet reached peak autumn. This was just the beginning of the change to come.

He didn’t want to go to dinner. His stomach growled faintly when he was in the shower, but he could heat up some ramen later in the dorm microwave and call it a night whenever, rather than endure the insufferability that was Jaemin. 

Sure, Donghyuck had told him he didn’t care, but who could say they didn’t care at all, even a little bit, what someone thought about them? It was something he was working on (although he felt like he’d been working on it as long as he’d been alive).

The abrupt knock on the door startled him. 

Not because it was loud, or forceful, but because Xiaojun rarely knocked before coming in, Yangyang never. 

Donghyuck glanced at Hendery, who met his gaze with a similarly surprised expression. Luckily, their staring contest was interrupted by another knock before Hendery’s dark eyes could start peeling back Donghyuck’s layers and see into his soul or something.

Hendery sighed heavily, in that way that let Donghyuck know that somehow this was  _ all his fault _ , and snapped his book shut before he shifted off his bed to go open the door.

Donghyuck rolled his eyes and looked back to his non-existent, but  _ soon to be existent _ notes. 

The door closed not a full five seconds after it opened. Donghyuck heard Hendery cross the room and sink back into his mattress before he looked up, raising his eyebrows.

“Who was it?”

“Oh,” Hendery said, face blank, his tone cool, “it’s for you.”

Maybe Jaemin wouldn’t be the one to set Donghyuck off after all -- Hendery would do.

Donghyuck struggled not to react, gritting his teeth as he stood.

When he re-answered the door, Mark smiled back at him, unbothered. 

Donghyuck let his shoulders relax from their stiff hunch. “Sorry about that.”

He meant more than Hendery’s childishness. He hoped Mark would understand that without him having to say it.

Mark just smiled. “Are you busy?”

The first thing Donghyuck noticed when he stepped into Mark’s room was how much darker it was than the hallway outside. The curtains were drawn, thick sienna fabric that blocked out the waning afternoon sun. Instead, lamps on his desk and on his nightstand emitted most of the light for the room, a warm glow that cast long shadows all over the walls.

Unlike Donghyuck’s room, sparsely decorated with only a few photos of Hendery and his friends beside the wardrobe, Mark and Renjun’s walls were almost entirely covered -- on one side, over the singular mahogany desk, the decorations looked more like the notes scattered over the surface of the desk itself, like essay drafts and equations started to crawl up the walls and got stuck there. The rest of the room, however, was layered in ripped-out pages from  _ Thrasher _ , grinning pictures of familiar faces, and handwritten, creased notes. 

Donghyuck hadn’t considered either boy particularly sentimental, but the decor proved him wrong, although the discarded clothes that covered the floor and made it nearly impossible to push the door open all the way kept him from romanticizing them too much.

Secondly, Donghyuck’s eyes caught on the singular bed pressed against the wall. It looked like a double, and on further inspection could just have been two twins pushed together, hidden by the thick duvet and knitted blankets thrown over it, but the sight still drew a faint blush to his cheeks. 

He looked away.

“You can sit anywhere,” Mark said, sounding just a nervous as Donghyuck suddenly felt. 

Donghyuck repressed his traitorous imagination and hopped up onto the lofted bed. He resisted the urge to lean over and smell one of the pillows, because he wasn’t a fucking creep and it probably smelled like B.O. anyway. 

Instead, he perched on the edge of the mattress, swinging his legs that hang off the side. Mark took his shoes off so he does the same, toeing them off so they fall to the floor -- one with a slap to the old wood, the other’s fall cushioned by a pair of... underwear. 

_ Cute _ .

“So,” Donghyuck drawled, “you brought me back to your lair. What now?”

Mark smiled, scrunching his nose up a little -- it wasn’t not disapproval, but amusement. Donghyuck had learned the Mark Lee expressions at an astonishing pace. He deserved an award.

“Want to study?” Mark asked.

Kind of. He had a chemistry exam coming up tangling hard knots of anxiety in his stomach, but being in Mark and Renjun’s room felt like a special occasion, like some utterly strange little Christmas, and he was too giddy to focus on anything as banal as chemistry. 

Donghyuck shook his head. “Let’s just hang out.”

Mark set his bag down on the crowded desk ( _ just one desk,  _ somehow more peculiar than one bed) and sat on the rolling chair facing Donghyuck, eyes wide behind his glasses, “Hang out?”

Donghyuck sighed. “I forgot. You just do research in your spare time. Where’s Renjun?”

Mark adjusted his glasses, to his credit looking justifiably bothered, although not as much as Donghyuck would like. “I do other stuff.”

“Like what?”

Mark cast his gaze around the room like something might jump out and remind him of his other interests, but the pause lasted a second too long. 

Donghyuck was in danger of being embarrassed himself if someone didn’t save Mark, and since it was just the two of them, he supposed that was his job now.

“I like movies,” Donghyuck said. “What’s your favorite movie?”

Mark dragged his teeth across his lower lip. The tips of his ears burned red. “I haven’t seen a movie in a while. Maybe... _ Donnie Darko _ ?”

“You’re so edgy, Mark,” Donghyuck said. “Wow.”

Mark laughed a little, unsure, like he wasn’t not sure if Donghyuck was making fun of him. It was fair. Donghyuck wasn’t sure either.

“You’ll have to show me some of your favorites, then,” Mark said. “Teach me.”

Donghyuck crossed his legs at the ankles, thinking. There was probably some kind of folklore horror movie that Mark would have probably liked, since he was all about the dead and dying. He was sure Mark had seen much worse in those books he pored over, not to mention whatever lay hidden in his internet history, but it was the most likely thing to interest him, he thought.

“I’ll get back to you,” Donghyuck decided. “But I’ve got some stuff you might like.”

The door creaked open just wide enough for someone to slip through, and Renjun appeared.

Renjun didn’t look surprised to see him sitting there, on his ( _ their? _ ) bed. There was probably nothing in the world that could surprise Renjun, who sometimes wore an expression that said he’d existed at the beginning of the universe and would exist as it reached its end. 

It was a hefty weight for someone of his stature. His mind and Jeno’s biceps were equally impressive.

There was a part of Donghyuck that suspected Renjun had a special sense for Mark’s floundering, and came to rescue him from Donghyuck before he could draw out anything juicy from him, like a hobby, or his favorite color.

“Hello,” Donghyuck greeted him.

“Hey,” Renjun said. He kicked off his shoes into the middle of the floor, stepping over clothes into the open spaces of floor exactly his pace-lengths apart. But instead of sitting beside Donghyuck, he climbed up onto the bed to lie on his back behind him, stretching his legs out with a contented sigh.

Mark was even more flustered than before, taking his glasses off to clean the lenses on his shirt and avoiding looking at either of them.

“What are we talking about?” Renjun asked. “Anything interesting?”

“No,” Mark said, as Donghyuck answered, “Sure.”

“We’re talking about hanging out,” Donghyuck amended.

“The important first step of hanging out,” Renjun remarked, serious.

Donghyuck liked that about him. So far, his jokes and regular comments always carried the same deadpan weight.

“What’s next?” Donghyuck asked, lightly teasing.

Renjun shrugged, turning his head to look at Mark, so Donghyuck followed his focus and looked with him.

“Usually I just do homework,” Mark admitted after a moment, “or read.”

“That’s not true,” Renjun said.

Donghyuck looked back to him from Mark.

Renjun sat up, propping himself up on his elbows as he craned his neck to see around Donghyuck and fix Mark with a serious look. “We hang out like normal people. Don’t make us sound like total nerds.”

Mark sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I mean. We go out to the lake sometimes.”

Renjun made a quiet sound that rings of approval. 

“The lake?” Donghyuck asked. 

He’d seen signs pointing in the direction of the lake --  _ Prophet Lake _ , but hadn’t taken the time to go see it. It didn’t look like much of a hike, but there were definitely woods involved, and Donghyuck wasn’t the type to run into any forests without a proficient guide, or really with a proficient guide, either. 

“Do people hang out there a lot?” He asked after Mark nodded.

“Not really,” Mark said. “It’s a little out of the way. After exams, we’ll all go out and have a few drinks there to celebrate, but only Renjun and I go out more than that.”

“Yeah, Jaemin’s scared of the dark, so he’s never in, and Jeno’s never in, and the other two…” Renjun trailed off as he shared a look with Mark that left both of them smirking in amusement.

Donghyuck itched to question the look, but was still caught on the other thing, that pushed a bubble of laughter from his lips. “Jaemin’s scared of what? The dark?”

Mark tsked his tongue against his teeth. “Don’t say anything. He’ll kill me.”

Donghyuck didn’t doubt it. It was nice to know his new mortal enemy had such an irrational fear, though. It made him far less scary himself.

“Let’s go, then,” Donghyuck decided, hopping off the bed to grab his shoes. It took some force, but he pulled them on without having to unlace either.

“Go?” Renjun asked.

“The lake,” Donghyuck said. “We’re not doing homework tonight, guys, that’d be, like, boring. And you have to show me this place now, or I’ll die from curiosity. Do you want to kill me?”

“No,” Mark said, and he seems much more serious about that answer than the joke deserved.

He stood by the door with one hand on the doorknob, the other in the pocket of his uniform slacks, and watched them exchange one of those looks they seemed to enjoy giving one another. 

“Mark will get the beer,” Renjun announced after a long moment of silent communication. He slipped off the bed and joined Donghyuck at the door.

“Beer? On Wednesday?” Donghyuck asked.

Renjun glanced at the calendar hanging by the door. “Only a day before Thursday.”

Maybe that meant something to an English person, of which none of them were, but Renjun and Mark had lived here long enough that it must have sounded logical to them.

Donghyuck opened the door once the metal glint of the cans previously stashed under the bed had disappeared into the safety of Mark’s bag. “You’re bad influences.”

“Oh, the worst,” Renjun agreed.

Donghyuck followed them out of the building. His responsibilities, like the chemical equations he needed to balance and Mr. Nakamoto’s project, weighed on the back of his mind. 

Renjun and Mark did this all the time, and they were both well-rounded students, from Donghyuck’s perspective. The fact that he had been struggling to catch up with the curriculum might had made him feel dumb, but he wasn’t dumb, and he’d put in the effort to prove it. 

He was allowed a few hours off screwing around with some friends.

Mark curled his fingers over the strap of his bag as he led the way around the corner of the building, cutting through the garden beside it. 

Donghyuck hesitated at the edge of the vegetation, letting the cool night air wash over his skin. 

Renjun nudged him from behind. In a second, the boy stood beside him. “Alright?”

Donghyuck met his eyes, nodded. Whatever Renjun thought was hidden behind his smile. 

Together, they followed Mark into the wilderness.

The surface of the lake gleamed bright with the reflection of the moon off the black water. At the edge, the tips of his shoes nearly dipping into the lapping water, Donghyuck could see the outlines of smooth, worn rocks under his feet, even through the soles of his shoes. 

He probably should’ve changed out of his uniform before going one a romp through the woods, but Renjun was still wearing his – the top two buttons undone, his slacks cuffed twice, exposing bare ankles where his socks had rolled down. Mark was in his white shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

They headed directly to a tree a few yards from the lake, with dense foliage and long branches that must have provided the perfect shade on a hot day. 

Donghyuck could close his eyes and imagine them both there in the spring, as the sun warmed their tan skin, sweat dripping down Mark’s neck as he read a book propped on his lap, maybe aloud. Renjun would lounge beside him, pretending not to look at him, or maybe fidgeting restlessly, wanting to take a dip in the lake while no one else is around. It would be just them two.

_ What do you do when you’re alone _ ? Donghyuck wondered.

The lake was so much bigger than he thought, but Renjun’s eyes were bigger, the same moon shone in them as he squeezed Donghyuck’s elbow, bringing him back to the present.

“You good?” Renjun asked.

Donghyuck smiled and brushed his fingers over Renjun’s. Renjun let go. “I’m good.”

“We can’t let Mark drink by himself. He gets lonely,” Renjun said as he led Donghyuck to the tree.

That would explain the older boy’s tendency to latch onto strangers, such as himself, although his obvious pickiness still allowed Donghyuck to feel special about it. 

“Mark,” Donghyuck said as he settled into the grass beside him, “you still owe me a ghost story.”

Mark pressed one of the beer cans into Donghyuck hand. It was cold and wet with condensation. After their walk, Donghyuck had expected to spend the evening choking on warm beer, drinking for the sake of getting tipsy without any further enjoyment, but Mark was still full of surprises. He couldn’t count him out yet.

“Didn’t I already tell you one?”

Donghyuck scoffed. “What? That campfire story at Jaemin’s?”

“Your bedtime story, Mark?” Renjun joined in. “I told you, it’s just not interesting.”

“Why don’t you really try and get me scared?” Donghyuck pressed before Mark could fully get a word in to defend himself. He leaned back against the trunk of the tree and popped the tab of his beer, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

Mark sighed and rolled his eyes. It appeared that he wasn’t able to maintain his calm and collected countenance while being hounded by such a great team as Donghyuck and Renjun were shaping up to be. “I’m not a great storyteller,” he responded.

“You offered,” Donghyuck pointed out, “or were you just trying to get me alone?”

He sipped his drink as Mark’s cheeks grew red, allowing his dig to sink in. A glance at Renjun found the other boy looking curious, the corners of his lips tugging upward in bemusement.

“They say that the school is haunted, you know,” Renjun murmured.

Donghyuck snorted. “Who’s ‘they?’ Chenle and Jisung?”

“Right,” Renjun said, “you don’t believe in ghosts.”

“They make for great stories,” Donghyuck allowed, “but not great science.”

They exchanged another glance at each other. Donghyuck had never been judged so harshly for not caring about the paranormal before enrolling in Norton, but maybe he’d just missed something on the pamphlet that said to be a student you had to love Halloween and conduct ceremonial rituals on the Quad after midnight.

“Tell me about the haunting, though,” Donghyuck prompted before it could get any more awkward. 

Mark opened his mouth first, but Renjun was the one to answer, leaning forward, his elbows pressed to his knees as he shifted closer to Donghyuck.

“Someone died here. A student,” Renjun said, voice low. “They were killed.”

Donghyuck raised his brows. “When? Where?”

“How?” Renjun interrupted. “No one knows for sure, it’s just a bit of a legend. They say that the school board and police covered it up, made it like nothing ever happened. Some say that you can still see him walking the halls, though, if you look close enough, if you pay attention.”

Donghyuck sighed. “That’s barely a story. You don’t even know any details? This is worse than Mark’s bedtime story.”

Renjun laughed. The sound broke through the still night and rang in Donghyuck’s ears. He couldn’t help but smile back at him, sparing only a brief glance to Mark to make sure he wasn’t offended. He knew that he wouldn’t be.

But Donghyuck had had enough of the hauntings for one night, even if he was the one who had brought the subject up.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Donghyuck asked.

It didn’t trip either of them up, which Donghyuck silently appreciated, noted and tucked away for further thought.

“He’s been everywhere already,” Renjun answers for Mark. “You should see all the postcards he’s gotten me.”

“You don’t go with him?”

Renjun shrugged one narrow shoulder up almost to his ear, and rocked the tab of his beer back and forth with one finger. “Nah.”

Donghyuck turned an accusing look on Mark, kicking his ankle. “You’re a terrible friend. Not taking your roomie on vacation with you? What’s the point in knowing someone as wealthy as you?”

Mark sucked in a quick breath, the air whistling past in his lips. “You’re vicious when you’ve drank.”

“But you already knew that,” Donghyuck murmured.

Mark held his gaze for a moment that felt longer than it probably was, his eyes dark in the dim light of the moon, looking away only to take a long drink. Donghyuck’s fingers tightened around his own can.

“We’re going to Prague after graduation,” Mark answered finally.

“Charming,” Donghyuck murmured.

Mark huffed out a breath small enough Donghyuck might not have heard it, had it not been for the stillness around them. Renjun had remained quiet for much longer than usual.

When he spoke, it was with an impish smile, one that dug into Donghyuck’s chest and nearly made him ashamed of the fit he was willing to throw just to irritate the senior who now sulked at their side.

“You should come with us,” Renjun said.

“To Prague?”

“Anywhere,” Renjun hummed.

“Wow,” Donghyuck said, “are we, like, best friends now?”

Renjun laughed and those bells started ringing in Donghyuck’s ears again. “If that’s what you want.”

It sounded like a question, but Donghyuck didn’t have the answer. Not yet, anyway.

“I’m not paying for him,” Mark huffed out to Renjun.

“Oh, want to bet?” Donghyuck teased. He raised his drink up, eyes glinting with a dare. He swallowed a laugh when Mark accepted, pressing the can to his lips to chase it with beer.

  
  


At first, all he registered was warmth. Then came the weight -- a heavy blanket, an arm. Breath puffed over the side of his neck. 

Donghyuck jerked upright, clutching the quilt laid over him in both fists. He couldn’t see the moon with the curtains shut, but his gut told him he slept longer than he should have, “Fuck. It’s past curfew.”

“It’s okay,” Mark murmured, “you can sleep here.”

“I don’t think that’s allowed.”

“Hendery won’t say anything,” Mark assured him.

Donghyuck remained unassured. But Mark’s hair was rumpled from being rubbed against his pillow, and Renjun’s eyes were still glassy from their few illicit swigs of beer, and he didn’t think he would be able to leave if he tried. He was ensnared in a trap of his own making. 

Later he might wonder how he had gotten back to Mark and Renjun’s room, who had lifted him onto the bed, without stirring him at all from his slumber, but his sleep addled mind couldn’t fully comprehend the impossibility of either of the boys beside him carrying him through the woods and up the stairs again.

Before he drifted off again, he thought he heard Renjun’s voice, wonder floating all around them as he murmured, “Look. He’s shining.”

But he couldn’t be sure.

Weeks went by, but the feelings didn’t get any easier.

His dreams were haunted by ghosts, by spirits that followed him down Norton’s dark halls and blew cool air over his cheeks as they whispered in his ears. 

_ Again _ , they breathed,  _ again, again. The cycle goes on. _

Unable to deal with the shadows in his room or the coldness that radiates from Hendery’s presence, Donghyuck headed out early. It was barely seven o’clock, so he didn’t bother with his tie just yet, letting it hang undone over the back of his neck. When he stepped into the dining hall, just as it opened, he was not surprised to see Xiaojun sitting at his usual table in the center of the room.

The only other people around were the dining hall workers, who shuffled behind the buffet counter and in the kitchen, too busy to mind a few quiet students who weren’t yet demanding their time and attention. 

Donghyuck wasn’t necessarily hungry. In fact, the idea of food this early made his throat clench. 

He sat across from Xiaojun before he could think any better of it. Hendery might have been cold to him, but Xiaojun and Yangyang were still relatively friendly. 

Just yesterday, Yangyang had waved to him from down the hall -- Donghyuck felt like an ass for not waving back, but he was distracted by Jeno’s regaling of the time Jisung nearly dropped Chenle from their second floor window in their attempt to sneak out past curfew. 

When Jeno said Chenle’d had a stake tucked under his arm and was scared of falling and getting stabbed, Donghyuck had laughed, and forgotten about Yangyang entirely until later that night, laying in bed as he recounted his day.

Xiaojun looked up when Donghyuck settled into his seat, remaining hunched over the book open on the table in front of him. It looked like the English Literature text Mark had been highlighting for days. 

_ ‘If you highlight the whole book, it’ll be like you didn’t highlight it at all,’ Donghyuck had told him, only to have the marker cap tossed at his face, bouncing off his cheek onto Mark (and Renjun’s) duvet. _

“Morning,” Donghyuck sighed, resting his elbows on the smooth table surface. He laced his fingers together and laid his cheek across them, propping up his head as he sank tiredly into his chair.

Xiaojun returned his greeting quietly. He eyed him for a moment before returning to his book, dark brows furrowed together in intense concentration, his attention so briefly granted to Donghyuck that he had to wonder if he’d gotten it at all.

Sitting in the silence of the early morning at Norton was fine with Donghyuck, who couldn’t quiet the sound of his own thoughts. The buzz of them made certain that he couldn’t relax, no matter how peaceful the light of the sun glinting off the dark wood of the tables, or the hushed murmurs of boys filtering into the room, already exhausted by the upcoming midterms.

_ Again _ , the voice in his head whispered,  _ again, again _ .

_ What again? The cycle of what? _

“Donghyuck.”

He opened his eyes, surprised to have found them closed to begin with.

The space in front of Xiaojun at the table was clear. The senior sat back, his arms crossed over his chest, surveying Donghyuck with a shuttered expression.

“Yeah?” Donghyuck rasped out.

“How have you been?” 

Considering their relationship, it was odd to hear the note of concern in Xiaojun’s voice. 

Donghyuck cleared his throat. “Fine. You?”

Xiaojun ignored him -- less surprising. “Has anything strange happened recently?”

_ His dreams. Mark. Renjun. Jaemin _ .

_ Definitely Jaemin _ .

“If anything had,” Donghyuck said, “that would be the least subtle way to bring it up.”

“Subtlety may be an art, but it’s a waste of time,” Xiaojun murmured. He leaned forward.

The disinterest that rested comfortably on Xiaojun’s face in the few months Donghyuck had known him was replaced with a hunger that made Donghyuck’s skin crawl. He resisted the urge to shift back, letting Xiaojun close the distance, although grateful for the solid table between them.

“Tell me what happened,” Xiaojun murmured.

“What happened?”

“With Mark.”

Donghyuck’s throat burned with rising stomach acid. “Has he said something?” 

Xiaojun narrowed his eyes and clasped his hands together on top of the table. He seemed to shift an inch closer. Donghyuck wondered if he was even in his chair anymore, or just hovering over his seat.

“You need to be careful,” Xiaojun murmured.

He was serious. 

Others had been as well, in the strange comments they’d made to him since moving in, but they’d been so offhand -- a casual reminder that nothing was as it seemed. This was different. The urgency in Xiaojun’s tone made Donghyuck’s mouth dry.

Donghyuck swallowed hard. It took a few seconds to get his tongue to work, but he managed, trying to match the level of Xiaojun’s voice. “Careful of who?”

“Anyone who’s more interested in you than they should be,” Xiaojun murmured. He paused, glancing up and over Donghyuck’s shoulder, and then sat back again, schooling his face into the same cool look Donghyuck had seen on him ever since they met. 

No way. This wasn’t a conversation that was going to end with a cryptid warning and silence. 

“What does that mean?” Donghyuck hissed out.

“Just be careful,” Xiaojun said again, “not everyone wants what’s best for you.”

“Seriously?” Donghyuck huffed.

“Bored of your friends already?” Hendery asked, sitting in his usual spot beside Xiaojun. 

Donghyuck wasn’t in the mood for more inane banter. He grabbed his bag, standing and pushing back in chair in one abrupt movement that nearly sent the chair tumbling over onto the floor. 

“Thanks for the talk, it was super helpful,” he snapped to Xiaojun. 

He didn’t care how childish he sounded, although he would eventually -- although this moment would wake him up in the middle of the night and make him sick, would replay in the quieter parts of his brain over and over and over. How he could’ve asked again, how he could’ve changed the direction they were heading, but he’d had no idea.

He was tired of this. He was still on the outside, even after all the effort he’d made to become a Norton boy, just like the rest of them. 

He turned his back on them, just as they had done to him, and left the dining hall without a second look back, trying to hold his head as high as he still could.

The boys caught him on his way to History. Not all of them -- just the two he’d tasked with doing his extra project work. For once, he was grateful for the glint in their eyes. It probably meant he’d have  _ something _ to tell Mr. Nakamoto about his progress, even if they had somehow dug up an old myth about blood-sucking monsters in this ancient civilization textbook.

He allowed Chenle to pull him to the side of the hallway, out of the way of other students rushing to their next classes. 

“We should talk,” Chenle started.

_ Oh, absolutely not _ .

“Yup, we’re talking,” Donghyuck said, “did you take notes for me?”

Chenle and Jisung exchanged a glance. If the boys around here didn’t stop that, Donghyuck would be tempted to throttle them, one by one. 

“Why’d Mr. Nakamoto want you to research this stuff?” Chenle asked.

“Extra credit,” Donghyuck told him, just as he’d told him before. He raised his arm to glance at his watch, hoping the two would get the point. 

Jisung clutched the book Donghyuck had passed on to them like it was his child, like there was some danger here and he had to protect it.

“It’s, like, weird,” Chenle said. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.

“Might be just outside your realm of expertise?”

“Donghyuck,” Jisung murmured, “it’s  _ creepy _ .”

That should have given him reason enough to pause, but time was ticking and they’d yet to tell him anything of real use -- tardiness was becoming a bad habit. 

“We looked into the author,” Chenle continued, despite Donghyuck’s clear irritation, “he’s not even a historian or anything, he’s works in  _ finance _ . He said it was, like, personal family history that made him want to research and write this thing.”

“Being interested in your family background isn’t a crime,” Donghyuck pointed out.

Jisung suddenly shoved the book toward Donghyuck, pressing it against his chest. “Read it yourself, then.”

Donghyuck pushed it back into his arms. “No, tell me, tell me. I’m listening, okay?”

They tried their best, in hushed voices, stumbling over the facts like dates and alleged names, words that flew right through Donghyuck’s brain without lodging in his memory. 

An ancient society -- one that existed seemingly outside of time and geography, without concrete evidence apart from a few ceremonial artifacts and children’s stories. 

It started with a rumor. 

Not the scandalous sort that made villagers titter and tut over the adulterous nature of the noble upper-class, but the kind whispered in dark alleys, spoken with the dread of men who surely knew they were dead as soon as the words passed their lips. 

Witches, they whispered, demons, the devil’s right hand men, the devil’s whores. 

The elite were hardly witches, though any passing witness wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference, what with the blood rituals and un-Godly ceremonies performed in the desecrated temples. 

To make a century long story short, the ruling class fell to an organized group of rebels — the only ones who could see the truth, through some divinely granted gift, according to the text Mr. Nakamoto had given him. 

The survivors, both the nobles and their protectors, vaguely alluded to as the cockroaches of the earth, which Donghyuck found maybe a little dramatic, spread out, laid low, tried to stay out of sight. Over time they learned that the public eye offered more protection than they thought, so they re-entered the spotlight, as billionaires, movie stars, politicians. They walked among the regular person every day, infiltrating the innocent society with their otherworldly, supernatural, demonic manipulations. 

It all sounded a bit tin-hatty to Donghyuck, who couldn’t help but say as much. 

Jisung groaned quietly, his eyes flitting up to the ceiling as if he couldn’t bear to look at Donghyuck, or he’d be forced to consider the weight of the consequences. 

“This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this guy has all the proof! Documents, artifacts,” Chenle breathed, the light of possibility shining in his eyes now that he’d revealed the Truth. “It’s incredible that nobody talks about this- we’ve never even heard of it.”

“Why would you have heard of some stuffy myth?” Donghyuck asked. “I don’t think the vampire subreddit covers this shit.”

“R/Vampires is nothing but fantasy,” Jisung snapped, unable to contain himself any longer.

Chenle turned back to his friend, motioning for him to take a few deep breaths. Jisung nodded slowly, closed his eyes, and focused on calming himself.

“Alright, Donghyuck,” Chenle said slowly, voice low and even, “let’s think it through. An elite class with power beyond imagining, described as devils, being hunted down before they can harm innocent lives.”

“Sounds like fantasy to me,” Donghyuck answered.

“Have you ever heard of the Illuminati?” Jisung tried.

Chenle laid a hand on his friend’s arm, shaking his head. “It’ll only confuse him, he’s not ready for that yet.”

Donghyuck sighed heavily. After all his protests, this exhale was the trigger. The two boys in front of him rocked back on their feet, expressions closed.

Chenle eyed Donghyuck curiously. He tilted his head to the side. “What’s the vibe, Jisung?”

Over Chenle’s shoulder, Jisung squinted. “He doesn’t believe.”

A pang of guilt shot through Donghyuck’s stomach, not for the first time in recent memory.

“Honestly, I want to listen to what you guys think, but I’m in a rush,” Donghyuck said gently, trying to be as kind as possible. “Can we meet later and talk about it? Library?”

Jisung’s lips twisted in disapproval, but Chenle beat him to an answer, nodding once before he turned on his heel. Jisung followed without argument.

“Oh,” someone said from behind Donghyuck, “wow, you’re  _ glowing _ .”

Donghyuck dug his heels into the floor, twisting around to face the person to whom the voice belonged. 

He recognized the man faintly from orientation -- the head of the infirmary, although he looked too young to be qualified for such a job at a prestigious academy like Norton. Something about the way he held himself told Donghyuck volumes about his knowledge, however, and it was clear that doubting this man would be a mistake.

The man’s name floated around somewhere in the back of his mind, unreachable behind the mass of other pressing matters. Like his comment.

“Um,” Donghyuck said.

The doctor waved his hand in the air between them. “Ah, sorry, sometimes things just slip out. What moisturizer do you use? Your classmates are always asking after skincare that will counteract puberty.”

“I think it’s just genetics,” Donghyuck said dumbly. He didn’t really want to admit that some nights he just used body wash from head to toe, including his face, and almost never used a moisturizer. It was better than not washing it at all, he guessed.

“Wow,” the doctor hummed, his face all sharp edges suddenly as he took in the boy in front of him, “sounds special.”

Donghyuck stood there speechless, his mind uncomfortably blank.

“Time to get to class, isn’t it?” The doctor prompted him after silence ticked on between them.

It was. Donghyuck ducked his head as he passed the man, racking his brain for his name -- he knew he was called something else, the name passed around between his classmates like a hero, someone far too cool to just be working in Norton’s infirmary. 

He couldn’t figure it out by the time he got to class, so he resolved to forget about it, trying to push out of his mind the ugly feeling that kept creeping in, trying not to hear the whispers that followed him down the empty hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so!! please let me know your thoughts in the comments or at my twt @jpseudy ! 
> 
> as always, thank you for reading <3


	7. pt vii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took so long...hello. 
> 
> please note again that tags include murder and that this is a story revolving heavily around death. if this is a subject that's uncomfortable for you, i'd advise you not to read any further. 
> 
> for all the questions: here are some answers :)
> 
> as always, thank you for reading <3

Raising the dead was, theoretically, a simple task.

All it took was the right ingredients, the right moon, the right incantation, and _BAM!_ the finest reanimated corpse one could wish for, at the right witch’s disposal.

Unfortunately, Mark was not a witch.

And he never would be since witches didn’t exist, at least not the kind that could perform a ritual to that extent. He knew this. He had to, after spending nearly four years looking for the perfect ceremonial steps to bring someone back.

He knew the consequences of it going wrong. He’d seen them himself, nearly ten years ago, and saw them every day he passed his cousin in the halls of the academy.

He knew what could go wrong, what Nature would take from someone who dared to divert its path. He knew what could go right, and it was completely unbalanced -- a chance to succeed was everything. But he was beginning to think that the chance wouldn’t ever come.

Sicheng had cast his will out of pure adrenaline, emotion running hot flames through his body. He gave everything without question, and Mark received the answer. A little late, but it was there.

But now all Mark had were questions. Questions that clouded his thoughts in every lecture, hung over his head during every meal, drew his shoulders up to his ears as he worked in solitude in the library until it closed, then in his room until Renjun forced him to sleep.

He tamped down nerves that grew every day around this time when he hadn’t done much of anything. He had other things to think about, like what had brought him to the clock tower at sunset.

It was a hassle, performing these rituals to share the bond, and it wouldn’t last much longer. Mark was sensitive to other people’s insecurities, so he’d never say it, but Kunhang and Dejun’s tie wasn’t very strong, at least not strong enough to extend to someone with as much energy pulsing in his body as Mark.

They were lucky they’d found each other before even turning double digits. He wondered sometimes if it was luck alone, or if there was something he was missing.

That night he met them in the chapel, as usual.

“Hey,” Dejun said as he shrugged off his coat, “have you eaten?”

These conversations always went in circles, the steady thrum of words that they had spoken a thousand times before, if not a million. The niceties they exchanged at this point had become moot, none of them tried to coax them out.

_Had he performed any great Acts in the past month? Had he felt any extreme fatigue? How was he feeling today?_

Dejun was the one was asked, always, while Kunhang watched Mark with a gaze that seared hot and jealous on Mark’s skin.

The thievery of Kunhang’s roommate would have been bad enough with the lifelong tension that lasted between them, but he’d also stolen Jaemin a few years before, and had been using Kunhang’s Guard since they were all children, cheeks fat with youth and eyes wide and greedy to the ceremony led by their adult family members.

They could perform the ceremony themselves now, and did without fail, although the process had become considerably more painful since Kunhang became so unwilling.

Not every guard-companion meant a deep, heartfelt relationship, but Mark knew theirs privately ached from the forced generosity of sharing their bond with him.

He could feel badly about it, but he tucked away all those feelings out of a sense of survival, if not for a simple lack of caring. Something about Kunhang’s hard stare made Mark pity him, but he had his own problems to worry about.

The people he cared about needed him, and he was the only person he knew strong enough to do what needed to be done. It wasn’t bragging to say he had the strongest connection to their abilities of anyone he knew, or knew of. It was just a fact.

Kunhang could deal with sharing his own measly amount of energy with Mark if it meant they would all stay safe. And he would, until Mark found his own Guard. It was a singular duty that Kunhang accepted, however unwilling.

Dejun was no more eager to come here every month, but had long since been resigned to it.

At the altar, Dejun slipped his hand into Kunhang’s, intertwining their fingers. Mark’s gaze stuck on their hands even as he felt Dejun’s palm press against his own.

Dejun’s aura was cool, the inhale of mid-autumn air or the sweet mint of a fresh stick gum. It wasn’t strong, and Mark only saw it sometimes out of the corner of his eye, flaring under Kunhang’s attention or when something rubbed Dejun the wrong way -- like when Donghyuck had first enrolled.

The aura trailed up Mark’s arm with a creeping chill. His skin was raised in little bumps all over, hair standing upright on the back of his neck. It felt all wrong. Dejun wasn’t made for him, and their energies clashed painfully.

Despite the disconnect, the cool feeling spread over his body like a thin sheet of armor, just enough to protect him from curious poking and prodding, to shield him from prying eyes.

In comparison, the outside air felt hot on his skin and he arrived home with sweat clinging to his upper lip. He shucked off his coat as he climbed the stairs, exhaustion weighing his eyelids down. The laziness in his limbs was quickly replaced with a rush of adrenaline, however, as he pushed his key into the lock on the door, only for the door to push inward, already open.

He paused, hand hovering over his key. He never left the door unlocked, and there was no reason he would have done so today. Renjun, too, would never unlock the door -- there was no need to.

He held his breath as he pressed his palm flat against the old wood. The door swung in slowly, the room revealed in a rectangle of light from the hall.

Mark exhaled again, relief flooding through him.

He had expected a mess at the hands of an intruder -- maybe the contents of his closet dug through, or his desk wrecked by someone searching for something they shouldn’t see.

Instead, Renjun sat at his desk, chin resting in his hand as he gazed at Mark’s computer screen. Some YouTube video played on mute, the captions flashing in the reflection of Renjun’s glasses.

As for the unlocked door? Donghyuck lay tucked under the quilt on the bed, curled up close to the wall, his back to the room. Renjun must have unlocked the door to let him inside and then forgotten about it.

Mark wasn’t fond of anyone being allowed access to the room, but with Donghyuck, he didn’t mind. In fact, lately, the room felt too big, too hollow without him. Only when Donghyuck’s presence filled the space did it feel warm enough to be a place to really live in any comfort.

Renjun tilted his head towards the door, not quite turning in his seat to face him, although his eyes slid and fixed on him. “Okay?”

Mark nodded and dropped his bag inside the doorway as he slipped his shoes off. “I thought someone had broken in.”

“Well,” Renjun said. Mark heard the rest without him needing to say it -- _in a way, maybe, someone had._

“Has he been here long?”

Renjun shook his head.

Donghyuck’s bag lay on the floor beside his shoes. Mark couldn’t resist straightening them into a neat line, despite the chaos of the rest of the room. Something heavy in Donghyuck’s backpack kept making it slump over, so Mark abandoned the idea after a few tries and let it fall over onto his sneakers again.

“You don’t look good.”

Mark looked up, his gaze catching on Donghyuck’s. The boy peeked over the blanket at him, his eyes bleary and full of sleep. The chill that clung to Mark’s spine loosened slightly.

“Hey,” Mark said.

“Hi,” Donghyuck said. “Why do you look so dead?”

Mark tried to ignore the cozy gruff in Donghyuck’s voice. He wanted to tell him to just go back to sleep, but at the same time needed him to keep squinting up at him like that. The cold was melting off Mark’s back under the heat of his gaze. “Long night. Projects.”

“You’re so boring,” Donghyuck said. Mark didn’t think he meant it. If he did, he wouldn’t hang around so much. Unless it was just to be near Renjun.

The thought crawled in his ear to stick on the surface of his brain. His nerves surrounding Renjun were becoming symbiotic at this point – he depended on them for his survival, but his continued existence only guaranteed more nerves. Even then, he could feel Renjun’s attention floating between them. He wanted to grab onto it and tug it toward himself like a selfish child.

Renjun was the center of gravity to Mark’s world. Everything tilted around the axis of his smile. Mark felt unsteady on his feet when Renjun’s attention shifted elsewhere. Over the past few months, Mark had felt more jolted than he had in his full Norton career.

Was jealousy justified when it boiled down to Donghyuck, whose very face demanded attention? Could Mark blame anyone for being a crow around Donghyuck, whose existence was lit with golden, shining light?

Could Mark get a hold of himself before he did something stupid like think about kissing him again?

“It’s late,” Mark heard himself say, “you should go back to your room soon.”

The warmth of the room slid off Mark’s skin, dripping onto the floor as Donghyuck’s expression shifted. The chill returned.

“I didn’t realize I was intruding,” Donghyuck said as he climbed down from the lofted bed. He hardly spared Mark a glance as he tugged his shoes on. Mark didn’t miss the smile he shot Renjun, who smiled back, their eyes glinting.

“See you tomorrow,” Renjun said as Donghyuck left them alone.

Mark smoothed down the blankets again, running his hands over the quilt, still warm from Donghyuck’s body. The room felt a little smaller, the walls closing in on him and Renjun until the space between them was too obvious to ignore, and still they kept it.

In his dreams, Jaemin never flew. He was never a wizard, he never breathed underwater or saved orphans from burning buildings.

In Jaemin’s best dreams, he sat on the long brick wall framing Norton’s rugby pitch and watched his best friend play. He could imagine that in these dreams he could reach from Jeno’s hand and feel his fingers pressed between his own, and they might walk down to the village and goof off in the local millinery shop, or go home and sit in his wing of the house, listen to his mother’s favorite records and watch each other out of the corners of their eyes.

Jaemin didn’t have those dreams, that was the trouble.

He tried to force them, would lay in bed before he fell asleep and play them out behind his eyelids like a memory of events that never happened, or happened in some alternate universe, with a Jaemin and Jeno who could survive the fall out of Jaemin’s feelings.

In Jaemin’s worst dreams, he stood on the thin layer of ice covering Prophet’s Lake like the lid on Pandora’s Box. In one hand he held the handle of the knife, the edges so sharp they blurred under the moonlight. With the other hand, he gripped the back of Renjun’s neck as he plunged the knife into his stomach, again and again, until his hands steamed from the hot blood covering them.

Renjun would never make a sound. He just stood there, hands at his sides, watching Jaemin make a mess of him.

Some nights, Jaemin would awake from these dreams in his own bed. He’d suck in deep, biting breaths until his heartrate evened out to match the rise and fall of Jeno’s chest in the bed a few feet over.

Some nights, Jaemin would stir miles from Norton, his bare feet sticky with mud or scratched from the road he’d walked for hours. His phone was usually not on him or dead, so he’d taken to keeping coins in his sweatpants pockets so he could find a payphone – they were few and far between, but he could get back to the village just fine, and from there he could always call Jeno to come pick him up.

It’s a routine Jaemin surrendered to – a routine which had him sitting on the curb outside the used bookstore in the village as he waited for Jeno’s headlights to round the corner.

The shiny red Prius idled to a halt in front of him. With the inevitability of returning to his dorm within reach, an exhausted fog clouded his head. He couldn’t quite manage to raise it from where he’d rest his cheek on his palm.

The driver’s door opened and closed before Jeno’s shoes appeared in his line of vision.

“Come on,” Jeno said.

His voice was deep with sleep, but something else laced his words that Jaemin couldn’t pinpoint. It was annoying beyond end when Jaemin couldn’t tell exactly what Jeno meant. He’d spent the last three years peeling back Jeno’s outward character, sinking elbow deep in the vibrant mess that he hid behind new Rolex watches and freshly bleached hair.

Jeno Lee made new money classy, made tense situations light, he made Norton Academy a home. But Jaemin couldn’t bear being kept on his toes.

He remained on the curb, running his tongue over the inside of his teeth. Everything tasted metallic.

“Let’s go home, Jaemin.”

Jaemin wondered if any of them would look at him the same if they knew him like he knew them. As it was, he could study amicably with Mark, watch rugby and share sly jokes about their classmates. He could keep quiet about Jisung’s struggle in his French classes, so that no one would doubt Jisung’s reputation as a genius, and he could accept the way his own heart fluttered warmly when the younger boy brought him sweets after passing his tests under Jaemin’s tutelage.

He could go on pretending with Jeno, keeping each other at an arm’s length even when pressed up shoulder to shoulder in the library late at night. He might even manage to allow Donghyuck a friendly word every now and then, if only for the way it made Chenle’s smile grow. He would be able to do all of this for the rest of his life, if they never found out who he really was underneath his well-groomed façade.

But something was coming that would make it impossible. He felt it in his chest, as true as the morning would come in a few hours, as sure as the night would then follow behind – the cycle continued without end, and he couldn’t wash all the blood from his hands without one of them noticing.

He startled from his thoughts as Jeno gripped his shoulders, shaking him.

“Get up, Jaemin,” Jeno said. It was firm enough to leave no room for Jaemin to protest.

He stood. He let Jeno open the passenger’s side door of the Prius, and swatted Jeno’s hands away with a roll of his eyes when his roommate and best friend tried to buckle his seatbelt for him.

For now, he could keep up the performance. For now, he could give them what they wanted from him. After that? He wasn’t sure, but the night air smelled a lot like death.

Jisung Park was a great friend. So when Chenle text him to meet him at the library ‘ _ASAP. LIKE, NOW,’_ Jisung abandoned his Classics essay and ran across the Quad, nearly knocking headfirst into Donghyuck and Renjun along the way.

The older boys looked amused, but also like they’d just been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. Jisung was never the greatest at social cues, but he’d been learning valiantly, and swallowed the comment he wanted to make about the flush of Donghyuck’s cheeks as he caught Renjun before they both were bowled over by their junior.

“Sorry!” Jisung called over his shoulder, but it didn’t matter much to him if they’d heard him. (Or to them, it seemed, as Donghyuck straightened Renjun’s tie with a sly smile, despite the fact that it was, like, _always_ loosened anyway.)

He skid to a halt in the back corner of the library, finding Chenle hidden away behind the massive bookshelf with all the carved words. (“Vandalism,” Chenle’d whispered gleefully last year, digging the edge of his protractor into the soft wood as he’d added their initials to the rest.)

“Finally,” Chenle sighed, like Jisung wasn’t a good friend and had taken too long. Jisung would admit, his stamina at long distances made it impossible to see that he’d taken the campus at a sprint, but Chenle was still too impatient.

Whatever. If Chenle had something important to tell him, then it would be totally cool, so Jisung hustled to his seat beside him, peering over his shoulder to look at his laptop, the library resource page pulled up on the screen.

Ugh. The newspapers again.

Chenle had a bright idea a few weeks back to start looking through the newspaper of the nearest town – a bit of a drive, but it’s not like the village had their own press, and any Norton news would be covered by this Daily Bugle Times or whatever it was called.

Jisung thought it was a little dry. So much time being spent reading about regular, un-paranormal deaths and thefts. There wasn’t enough heat in it. It wasn’t nearly as attention grabbing as the old tomes he’d lugged to their dorm from the rare bookstore in London, which he visited nearly any chance he could. It was such a great place – so dark, so dusty. It breathed a refined life into the books, which puffed back out at him with every page turned.

The digital screen couldn’t start the same fire in Jisung, no matter how easily accessible it made the world. Chenle didn’t have such qualms. That’s why they made such a great team.

“What am I looking at?” Jisung asked.

Chenle tilted the laptop in his direction but covered the screen with his hand. His eyes were lit, his chest rising and falling so quickly it was as if he’d run all the way here and not Jisung himself. As Jisung watched, his lips curled into a grin.

“This is it, Park,” Chenle said. “This is everything.”

Jisung eyed the date on the article as Chenle let his hand fall away.

Almost ten years ago – the anniversary would fall on Sunday, the same day as the big rugby game.

The headline: _LOCAL BOY FINDS BODY IN PROPHET LAKE._

Jisung’s mouth went dry as he read further. Chenle was right.

This was everything they could’ve dreamed, even if it was a nightmare.

Moonlight bounced off the whites of Renjun’s eyes. His fingertips kept grazing across Donghyuck’s wrist as they stumbled through the woods, laughing.

Donghyuck’s skin felt warm when Renjun touched him even though the other boy always felt cool all over. He resisted the urge to grab hold of his hand, squeeze his fingers together against his palm until they were both the same temperature – maybe then Renjun wouldn’t shock him so much.

Renjun carried the drinks in his pockets, which made them stick out from his slim hips in heavy lumps that dragged his trousers down – he had to stop every few minutes to pull at his belt loops and tug them back up. His struggle was endearing – it made Donghyuck’s lips twitch with a teasing smile he only barely held back.

“What about Mark?” Donghyuck had asked when Renjun suggested they go out to the lake to blow off steam, despite the fact that the temperature had been rapidly dropping for days now.

Renjun had shrugged off the question. “He’s busy.”

Mark always seemed busy, but he also looked exhausted. Donghyuck felt a faint twinge of guilt when they slipped out of the dorms without trying to find him or ask him along, but it was quickly covered by the rush of energy he got whenever he spent time with Renjun – which had been more frequently over the past month.

Between classes, Theater Society, and rugby, Donghyuck thought he wouldn’t have much time for socializing, but Renjun slipped into his cracks of freetime easily. Both of them were equally as lonely, Donghyuck thought. Renjun didn’t look like he was on the outside, but his presence was a little duller when Mark was absent, he seemed lost. Donghyuck felt lost too. So maybe they’d found solace in each other.

There was more than that. Renjun knew a part of Donghyuck that Donghyuck wasn’t sure he knew himself. They just fit – not like two halves, but the same half. Renjun was his reflection, but a better image than the one Donghyuck saw if he looked in the mirror.

Renjun grabbed Donghyuck’s elbow before he could trip over a rock. Still, Donghyuck swore loudly, his toes throbbing from the impact.

“Careful,” Renjun said. His voice was full, his hands magnetic. Donghyuck gravitated toward him.

He let Renjun guide him the rest of the way, skin tingling where Renjun rest his hand in the crook of his elbow.

“Are you nervous about the game?” Renjun asked as they got settled under the tree.

The lake was only a few yards away, but still Donghyuck couldn’t see it through the frosty haze of the night. His breath puffed out in front of his face in clouds. The ground was frozen under his legs, but he tried to ignore the discomfort.

Renjun looked fine, leaning back against the trunk with a smile playing over his lips.

Donghyuck’s hands were so cold the chilled can felt warm when Renjun pressed it into his palm.

“Not really,” Donghyuck answered at last. “I probably won’t get off the bench.”

“You’re better than you think.”

Donghyuck wished those words meant more.

“You underestimate how highly I think of myself,” Donghyuck said.

Renjun’s laugh rang in his ears. Donghyuck took a long drink, hoping the alcohol would muffle the sound, but it vibrated in Donghyuck’s heart. He wondered if Renjun’s heartbeat matched his own, if even their inner workings followed the same beat.

“You can’t fool me,” Renjun said, but Donghyuck knew that he could, that he probably would if given the chance.

Not that he wanted to. Acting was a habit that had begun to dig under his psyche to stay, something he picked up from the other boys at Norton like a spare coat. It fit, it was easy to wear, and comforting, but keeping everyone at a distance was a dual edged sword. Donghyuck still ached to be pulled in close, to be let in. The others had to feel the same, underneath their designer brands and daddy issues.

“It’s a little scary,” Donghyuck admitted, allowing Renjun the inch of vulnerability. “Everyone is taking it so seriously.”

“It is serious.”

A game? Weren’t games supposed to be played for fun? Donghyuck felt the doubt cross his face before he could mask it. Renjun caught it easily.

“It’s serious because it’s important to people,” Renjun said. “Like Jeno.”

Oh, Donghyuck knew that. Jeno had been wound up for about two weeks. In an interesting twist, Donghyuck had taken to saving his notes for Jeno rather than begging Jeno’s off of him. History with Mr. Nakamoto included the new responsibility of jabbing Jeno with the end of his pencil anytime Mr. Nakamoto noticed his distraction and jumpiness.

He supposed that this importance he could accept. Jeno had found a warm place for himself in Donghyuck’s fondness, and Donghyuck felt nothing but good things for him. If it weren’t for Jaemin, Donghyuck thought that he and Jeno might even be considered close. Unfortunately, Jaemin took up a large part of Jeno’s brain.

“It brings the school together,” Renjun continued, “having something to all root for together.”

“Can I expect to see you at the game, then?” Donghyuck asked.

Renjun looked surprised. Donghyuck watched his lips move around words he couldn’t quite manage before he gave a simple nod in answer.

“Great,” Donghyuck said. He licked his lips. It only made then sticky with the saliva that cooled as soon as it met the air. He ignored the sensation, watched Renjun’s quick glance down at his mouth and away again, as if he could make out anything around them, as if he could even see the stars through the cloud cover.

Donghyuck could only see the moon in Renjun’s eyes. His skin glowed like he was something else – he stood out in the dark forest like a creature unworldly.

“Yeah,” Renjun said. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck said, “I’ll play better with you there, if I get off the bench.”

Renjun’s chiming laugh ripped from his mouth without a chance and then Donghyuck was there, his hands flat in the frozen grass on either side of Renjun’s hips. The ground bit back at Donghyuck’s hot skin yet he only felt the cold night air between them as the enemy, the challenge was in closing it.

Renjun curled his hands around Donghyuck’s biceps, digging his fingers into his flesh. Donghyuck waited.

“Donghyuck,” Renjun said seriously.

“Renjun.”

Renjun just said his name again, grip tightening around his arms so that he couldn’t move – not to pull away, not to lean in closer. So he hovered there, his heart pounding with the anticipation of feeling Renjun’s lips under his own and the fear of chance he might not be allowed to.

“I have to tell you something.”

Donghyuck nodded. What could it be? Nothing he could come up with would make Donghyuck not want to kiss him.

“Donghyuck,” Renjun said, eyes searching in Donghyuck’s for something, something urgent. “Donghyuck, I’m dead.”

Donghyuck stared at him for a beat before his words sunk in, still blocked by the simple logic that broke through the alcoholic haze in Donghyuck’s brain. “What?”

“I’m dead,” Renjun repeated. “I’m not alive, like you. I’m dead.”

Donghyuck sat back heavily on his ass again. Renjun hadn’t yet loosened his grip, was forced to lean in with him with the abruptness of Donghyuck’s movement, and he hastened to let go of Donghyuck, give him space.

Donghyuck squinted at the boy in front of him, who glowed under the moonlight peeking through the clouds, who was there, physically, just like Donghyuck, and whose eyes were wide and shining as they looked back at him, who said he was a dead man.

“Right,” Donghyuck said slowly. “Sure.”

Renjun sat up like he was holding his breath, shoulders stiff. His fingers curled into his palms. “Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck felt his lips loosen, curving into something like a smile. He felt all his teeth showing, the air against them like ice cubes. “That’s some fucking rejection, man.”

“It’s not,” Renjun protested.

It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough to justify such a statement as being _dead._ He rolled onto his feet, legs aching from his time, however brief, on the frozen ground.

“Goodnight, Renjun,” Donghyuck said, inwardly cursing how his voice shook. Maybe it wouldn’t be heard over the wavering breaths Renjun himself let out as he tried to scramble to his feet as well.

Donghyuck didn’t want to wait, he couldn’t, not when embarrassment was rolling hot and fast in his stomach. He felt the heat crawling up his esophagus and turned away before it could reach his throat – he ran, shamefully enough, and didn’t question the light that followed him home, how he never stumbled once.

Mark felt the doomed quiet from the moment he stepped into the building. It spun through the air on a crooked web, sticking to his exposed hands, covering his eyes with a clouded film. He summoned his way to shake it off, pressing forward through the haze of Renjun’s emotions to their room.

It was heaviest outside the door, he thought, unassuming of the strength with which the stinking grief would hit him when he pushed it open and stepped inside.

Renjun stood in front of the window, looking out, but the lights were all on, and all that either of them could see was their own glass reflections staring back through the dark.

“What happened?” Mark asked.

Renjun hadn’t felt this upset in years. Mark had to grasp out into the space around them to keep them both tethered, to keep Renjun from spinning like a top back into void of wherever spirits went. Renjun’s death felt sharp like knives in his hands. He was sure that if he looked down, he would see crisscrossing red lines all over his palms.

“I told him.”

He didn’t need to clarify who. This was a game they’d both been playing since the start, unspoken, tossed between them like a ball that couldn’t be allowed to touch the ground. It hadn’t gone well, obviously. Who had lost? Who had won?

Not Donghyuck.

Maybe none of them.

“How much?” Mark asked. His guilt was still hovering in the air above their heads. Was it a part of the situation in front of them now?

“Just about me,” Renjun said, as if that wasn’t enough to upend everything.

Mark was one side of the story – a weird family, maybe, freaky traditions that maybe Donghyuck could wrap his head around. Renjun was something else, a different story entirely. He was proof of things that shouldn’t be real.

Renjun was a haunting and Donghyuck didn’t believe in ghosts.

Mark set his bag on the ground and stepped in closer, closing the distance between them. Still, he didn’t move to touch him. His hands hung at his sides, useless. “We could’ve told him together.”

_Why now? Everything is fine._

Renjun’s gaze darted away like a skittish dog. He looked over Mark’s shoulder, pretending he was still brave, pretending he didn’t have the power to break Mark in two.

When he thought about it later, Mark might have known what he was going to say, might have asked differently. It wouldn’t have changed anything, after all, but maybe the surprise wouldn’t have hit Mark so suddenly. Maybe he would have been able to predict the shock of not being hurt at all, when that was all he had been prepared for.

“We almost kissed.”

It was simple. Mark and Renjun, one and two. One couldn’t be without the other. Donghyuck would have to have both.

Mark should’ve been surprised, but he wasn’t. Honestly, he just felt a little upset he wasn’t there.

He covered that quickly. Priorities.

Renjun’s hurt, however, whipped around the room with renewed vitality. “Where have you even fucking been?”

Mark blinked at him, hands coming up into the space between them. Renjun’s glare was fast – he dropped them again quickly. Touching wasn’t something they could handle in the light of full consciousness, outside of skin on skin under the peace of Norton at sleep.

That was a boundary drawn from the moment Mark realized how distracting Renjun’s smile was, when he’d looked up from his math homework in his second year and realized Renjun’s absent gaze had dug into his chest and found a home there.

Distractions were useless to him, they wouldn’t bring Renjun back from the grave any faster.

But here they both were, Renjun standing in front of him accusing him of absence. Didn’t he see that it was all for him?

“I’m here,” Mark says, quiet, because he’s never raised his voice at the boy in front of him. If he’d ever raise his voice at anyone, Renjun would still be the last one. “I’m always here.”

“You’re not a liar,” Renjun says, “you’re awful at it.”

Mark had never had to know the necessity of lying. _He had a way about him,_ everyone said, and they were right. His charm was something he was born with, and it was what would kill him if he wasn’t careful.

“What do you want me to do?”

Renjun looked at him and the room stopped spinning. The ground under Mark’s feet felt a little firmer, their tether wound tight around his hands.

Mark would do anything. The world was at Renjun’s feet.

Renjun let out a slow breath. “Help me.”

Jeno found Mark before Mark could find Donghyuck.

He had the look of a man at the end of his rope. Mark was in a rush, of course, he had a promise to fulfill, but Jeno was a good guy and a better friend.

Besides, the dark purple bags under his eyes marring his usually perfect, glowing skin told Mark that he was doing worse than usual.

Mark took Jeno by the shoulders, offered him a smile. “What’s up?”

“Jaemin’s a mess,” Jeno said quietly. “I don’t know what else to do, Mark. He’s- I don’t know what else to do.”

The afternoon sun hit Jeno’s bleached hair and bounced off it. His roots were coming in dark and fast. Sweat gathered along his hairline, not from any heat, as there was none on a cold day like this one, but from the same thing that made his hands shake where they gripped the strap of his bag.

“I can talk to him,” Mark heard himself offer.

“Would you?” Jeno breathed. His eyes widened at the idea, and he nodded before Mark could respond. “That would be- please. He’ll listen to you.”

Mark had never witnessed Jaemin listen to anyone but Jeno or his parents. Still, he squeezed Jeno’s shoulders, nodded, smiled. “I’ll talk to him.”

Jeno was too young and kind for the weight that fell on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have had to carry Jaemin’s issues, without even knowing their name, but it wasn’t a question of fairness. It was a question of loyalty.

 _And love_ , Mark thought, and he wondered if Jeno even knew that himself.

And Mark found Jaemin exactly where he knew he would.

“We’re not friends,” Jaemin said, without even turning around. “You just think you need me.”

There was something inside Jaemin. Mark had never doubted that. It was cruel and clinging to him like a parasite.

But that wasn’t why Mark wanted him to tag along. In fact, it wasn’t Mark who wanted him around at all, in the beginning, and maybe that made the lie ethical, made it bearable for Jaemin to go on believing it.

Knowing that Renjun was the one who reached out would ruin Jaemin’s fantasy that he could have a perfect, normal life. That’s what separated Jaemin from the rest, wasn’t it? Knowing.

He always found Jaemin out by the lake in the winter, though only when the sun was up.

He thought it was strange, how easy Jaemin had found the place during his first year, but that was before he knew he’d been coming back for the past ten years, shuffling over the glittering ice to stand on the edge of the frozen water.

“You know that’s not true,” Mark said. Neither one of them fully believed it, but it was placating enough for Jaemin to relax his hands at his sides.

“Is Jeno making you talk to me?” Jaemin asked.

Mark shoved his hands into his pockets, hitched his shoulders up until his coat brushed against his earlobes. “He’s worried. We all are.”

 _We_. It was the heaviest word in the air between them. Who is _we?_

It used to be just Mark and Renjun. Initially he wouldn’t have minded it much if it had continued that way, but being a loner was suspicious, and to everyone else, that’s what he was. Until Jaemin.

Renjun was always mouthing off about Mark’s classmates. He was lucky none of them could hear him, until Jaemin did. Until Jaemin turned around and snapped back at him.

It was the first time someone else had witnessed Renjun. Mark was the first. Then Jaemin, who looked at Renjun once and then refused to do it again for the next three years.

He was good enough at pretending he couldn’t see or hear Renjun to nearly fool himself, Mark was sure, but he wasn’t good enough to fool Mark.

“I’m fine,” Jaemin said. He tried hard to mean it. The cool edge of his voice overpowered whatever doubt he might have felt.

Mark looked at Jaemin’s back and wondered what would be his downfall – his curse or his rigidity? Either way, he would snap, clean in two. It was only a matter of time.

“Are you going to the game?” Mark asked.

“What a stupid question,” Jaemin said.

It was a question with an obvious answer, but one needed to shift the direction of the conversation, which had been headed nowhere if not somewhere bad for both of them. Mark watched his back for another long moment before he turned away again.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” Mark called over his shoulder, knowing that he would because it was a constant. Routine had been established. It couldn’t be broken.

Had Mark known, really, what Jaemin could do – would he have pressed him further? For a boy raised under the hands of Fate, do choices matter, when looking back? Did anything that day matter at all?

There was a record store turned coffee shop that all the hip Norton boys frequented. Donghyuck hadn’t managed to swing by yet – most of his time in the village had been monopolized by Mark’s obsession for the used bookstore and its collection of folklore – but it wasn’t surprising to end up there when Lucas invited him to hang out after rugby.

He was surprised, however, to find Hendery and his friends already waiting there, slumped over a table in the center of the room with coffee cups to match the size of their finals-induced eye bags, looking much more relaxed out of their Norton blazers.

“I didn’t know you were friends,” Donghyuck said as he collected his order from the counter, following Lucas through the bustling store to the table.

“Huh? Oh, yeah! I’ve known Dejun forever, and then Kunhang, and, well, Yangyang and us all just fit.”

The names made Donghyuck’s head spin. He eyed his roommate and the others as he and Lucas joined them, wary of the way they might react to his presence. But Xiaojun ( _Dejun,_ he figured out quickly) smiled amicably, leaning forward over his cup as he took a sip. The steam fogged up his big glasses, which made _Kunhang_ chuckle and swipe them off his nose just to wipe the lens with his own shirt.

Dejun was still looking at Donghyuck when Kunhang replaced the glasses on his face. The boy who had warned him about the people he was surrounding himself with was nowhere to be found, replaced with an easy smile and soft, fluffy hair at odds with his usual gelled coif.

“I didn’t expect to see you out,” he said.

Donghyuck shrugged in response.

“We don’t often get the opportunity to see you by yourself,” Dejun continued.

Donghyuck felt the memory of last night’s rejection hot on his face. It felt so obvious, like a brand on his cheek everyone else could see. He knew they were all laughing every time he turned around – he wasn’t like them, the future world leaders, these boys born for a classic education in the English countryside. Who could act like they wanted to kiss other boys and turn away just like that, without even blinking.

_The outsider, always._

“Here I am,” Donghyuck said, slipping a smile onto his face like he belonged there, cozied up with them.

Lucas jumped into the quiet with a tale of their walk over. He made it sound much more exciting than it was – the cat that crossed their path became a feral creature, the puddles they jumped over, splashing dirty rainwater onto each other’s ankles, were suddenly fjords crossed with their bravey and wits alone. Lucas ( _Yukhei_ , Kunhang admonished, crowing) only had words that matched his voice – bright, extravagant. Nothing less would do.

One of them was quieter than the others, his shoulders curled inward as he stared into his cup.

Donghyuck leaned over, resting his elbow on the table. “Yangyang.”

Yangyang startled. He looked up at him with wide eyes, fingers flexing over the handle of his mug. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Donghyuck returned, turning possibilities of a conversation over in his mind, “how’s your part of the history project going?”

Yangyang dug his teeth into his lower lip. “It’s fine, yeah, almost done, don’t worry about it.”

He was hardly worried. Besides, Yangyang was one of the more attentive students in that class, if only because Mr. Nakamoto could be a little intimidating.

“It’s cool. We still have a couple weeks,” Donghyuck said instead. He should’ve said something else.

Yangyang nodded, ducked his head again.

He wanted to say more, opened his mouth to, but was distracted by the distinct sound of Kunhang clearing his throat and the quiet that fell over the table until Yukhei, twisting in his seat, cheered, “Hey, Mark!”

“Hey,” Mark said, then, “Donghyuck, can we talk?”

Ice crawled up Donghyuck’s throat, a memory sensation of the night air as he sucked in deep breaths on the way back to his own dorm. Renjun hadn’t followed him, but now Mark had.

“Oh,” Donghyuck managed after a moment, staring back at Dejun as the other boy’s gaze met his across the table, “did you come to fetch me?”

“It’s about Renjun,” Mark said.

Across the table, Kunhang started almost violently in his seat, knocking over his hot cup of coffee into his lap. He stood, swearing, and in the mess of Yangyang grabbing napkins and Yukhei shrieking as coffee dribbled on his own legs, Mark grabbed Donghyuck’s arm, hauling him out of the shop.

Donghyuck cast one look back over his shoulder. Dejun met his gaze.

His eyes would stay with Donghyuck the rest of his life. Did he have any idea?

Donghyuck looked away.

“What is your problem?” Donghyuck spat as he ripped his arm out of Mark’s hold.

Wind whipped across their lone figures, the only two people stupid enough to stand out on the curb when there was a warm building three feet away.

Donghyuck crossed his arms over his chest, eying Mark as he rubbed his fingers across his chin, looking away, then back, away again. He held himself in a way Donghyuck had yet to witness – nervous, maybe.

“I’m not interested in being rejected a third time,” Donghyuck said. “I’ve got the message, okay? You didn’t have to come here and, like, intrude while I’m…while I’m hanging out with my…friends!”

Mark’s glances paused on the wide front window of the shop. Amusement flickered over his face but settled into serious contemplation. He nodded, pursing his lips. “Right. Your friends. Do you know Hendery’s name yet?”

Ugly heat flared in Donghyuck’s brain. It spread so fast, so thick over every rational part of his mind that he didn’t realize he was speaking until he had finished calling Mark every version of ‘pretentious fuck’ he could think of, and then some.

Mark grabbed his hands and only then did Donghyuck fall quiet, voice petering off as Mark’s soft fingers dug into his palms, his thumbs pressing over the back of his wrists. Donghyuck stared at the boy in front of him and decided that he’d like to see someone deck him someday, just to witness the seeming impossibility of Mark off balance.

“What?” Donghyuck asked, bristling all over again as Mark smiled, _“What?”_

“No one’s _rejecting you,_ you-” Mark quieted himself quickly, shaking it off. “What did Renjun tell you?”

“That he’s dead.”

Mark didn’t look as affected as Donghyuck would have, in his position. He just nodded again, continuing the infuriating gentle circles of his thumb over the backs of Donghyuck’s hands.

“And you don’t believe him?”

Donghyuck could have screamed – really, the sound travelled all the way to the seal of his lips before dying there. It wasn’t a question that deserved an answer in any form. He thought he might just pretend he hadn’t heard it at all.

“He’s upset,” Mark continued. “You should talk to him.”

“How can I?” Donghyuck asked. “Are you going to take me to his grave? Let’s just take a quick trip to the cemetery, then. Does Norton have its own?”

“I know it’s hard to understand.”

“Oh, _fuck off.”_

“We can explain,” Mark continued, unbothered, “let me explain.”

Donghyuck took a moment to breathe, took a moment to assess the situation he’d found himself in, holding hands with a boy who wouldn’t give him the attention he wanted but would track him down to convince him that he’d nearly kissed a ghost.

It was different. It was funny, almost. Maybe he could blame it on the charm Mark exuded, which allowed him to convince so many people to do so many things.

Yet, for whatever reason, he knew Mark couldn’t do the same to him, couldn’t sway his decisions. Maybe Donghyuck was just curious, maybe he was tired.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He unfolded his fingers to press the tips to Mark’s wrist. His pulse rabbit hearted under his touch. Donghyuck wondered if his felt the same.

The day of the game fell fast on them, as sudden as the sunshine that broke through the rain that had covered the Academy in puddles the size of lakes. The Quad had become a marsh, the path the rugby pitch a mudslide. But the morning of the game brought light and a wavering sense of hope that infected the student population.

In the library, Donghyuck kneeled on the floor between the wall and the bookshelf. It was a tight fit, cramped, but the light still reached the old wood. Awed, he traced his fingers over the etchings. A whole history of Norton Academy, right under his hands.

He found Chenle and Jisung’s initials alone, nearest to the side of the shelf that housed nonfiction. _Ironic,_ Donghyuck thought first and then, _maybe not._

It was sweet of them. A fraction of youthful innocence that didn’t belong in their faces anymore. It must have been like magic to witness their childhood, to see the beginning of their ever evolving imaginations, under the care of nannies and mansions and _money._

And up he leaned, reaching. He found them there, right where Mark had told him. Three sets of initials.

_SD._

_YN._

_RH._

And a date – eleven years ago.

Donghyuck exhaled, his hands trembling. There were other _RH’s._ It wouldn’t have been impossible. But Mark had showed him Sicheng’s old yearbooks – the photos of him as a young Norton boy, of his friend and classmate Yuta Nakamoto, of Renjun.

Donghyuck dug his nails into the ridges of Renjun’s initials and swallowed hard, his tongue too big and dry for his mouth.

Eleven years ago Renjun crept into the back corner of his library with his best friends, stifled their laughter as they carved their names into Norton’s history.

Ten years ago Renjun died.

It filled Donghyuck with a hollowness he didn’t deserve. Renjun was within reach. He hadn’t known him then, it wouldn’t have even been possible for him to.

But Renjun hadn’t deserved to die, either, not at sixteen.

Donghyuck bit down on his lips and thought about Renjun’s hands on his arms, his touch cold. If he could wrap him in his own arms, shield him from the wind, would be able to make him warm?

“Good luck tonight, Donghyuck!” Mr. Nakamoto called as Donghyuck left his class that day, slapping a hand to Jeno’s shoulder in comradery when he passed behind.

Donghyuck smiled, let Jeno loop their arms together as they walked down the hall. Jeno’s voice filtered in and out of Donghyuck’s ears as he picked up on his excited chatter of the game that lay ahead of them.

All Donghyuck could think about was if Renjun had felt like this when he walked down the hall with his friends. He probably shone like something special, carried himself as someone who knew they’d be someone important as soon as they got out in the real world, as soon as they escaped the confines of secondary school politics.

He ached for Renjun to have gotten that far.

In his office, Yuta passed Sicheng the stack of photos, their surfaces tacky with something spilled on his desk years ago. He remembered the look that crossed over Sicheng’s face when he first saw the stained corners, the resigned loss. It sunk in Yuta’s stomach, but he had no such regrets.

There was no point in holding onto the past. But this – he did this for Sicheng, every year without fail, carving out the date in his calendar with red ink.

“Need a drink?” Yuta asked.

He had a great wine he’d gotten on vacation last summer from somewhere in Italy during a family reunion. He couldn’t say what it was, because alcohol dulled your senses, and he preferred his senses sharp. Still, he kept a few bottles in his supply cabinet for times like these, when Sicheng would wander in searching for something to keep his memories at bay.

Sicheng shook his head. Rare.

A sign of healed wounds? Doubtful.

“The game tonight should be exciting,” Yuta said. “Nothing like a good rivalry to get teenagers’ blood pumping.”

Sicheng held a photo under Yuta’s desk lamp, leaning forward on his elbows to inspect it at close range. As if he hadn’t seen it a thousand times before. He was so predictable.

This was an anniversary event, but they had sat here more than the now ten times it would require. It was so lucky that they’d both come back to teach here, after spending their college years apart.

Now Yuta didn’t have to book a train ticket to see Sicheng just for one night of commiseration. No, now Sicheng would wander in all by himself.

“We look so young,” Sicheng said.

They did. “It was a few years back.”

Sicheng huffed a breath resembling laughter. Yuta figured it was as close as he got anymore.

The death left Sicheng empty, poured him out like an old, half-drunk bottle of pop, and now he remained eternal, waiting. He’d have to wait a long time to feel alright again, Yuta thought, even with the nurse boyfriend, if he hadn’t gotten over the death a friend in ten years.

Had they even been that close? Yuta wondered how their relationship could have been that important, if Renjun didn’t even know what he was before he died.

Yuta checked his watch. It was getting late in the afternoon – he still needed to grab a bite before the game, and if Sicheng was going to manage the night he’d need something too.

“Sure you don’t want that drink?”

A knock on the door – they both turned toward it. Yuta was saved from calling out by the new arrival pushing it open. No answer. A little rude. What else could he expect from Ten?”

“Sicheng,” Ten said. In his mouth, Yuta’s old friend’s name sounded worn smooth of all his ragged edges.

Ten’s aura wasn’t strong, but it had a bite. Yuta’s mouth watered as Ten stepped into the room, his amber shine spreading over Sicheng’s skin like silk from the contact of Ten’s hand on his shoulder.

Sicheng reached up with his free hand. His fingers grazed over Ten’s knuckles, and then they, too, were all warm amber.

“I thought you were meeting me for dinner,” Ten said.

He didn’t deign Yuta important enough for a greeting. Yuta couldn’t summon the energy to care much – he checked his watch again.

“Sorry,” Sicheng said.

Ten had already caught sight of the photographs. His mouth worked into a tight line. He squeezed Sicheng’s shoulder firmly and let go.

“He wouldn’t want you to-”

“Don’t,” Sicheng cut in.

Ten swallowed whatever false assurance he’d started, but didn’t step out of Yuta’s office again.

One thing Yuta could admire about the man – Ten didn’t step away from what he wanted, he kept it all within his sight. They were similar in that way, although he doubted Ten would have noticed.

“Sit down,” Yuta offered, “have a drink with us.”

Ten’s gaze flickered his way. He remained unimpressed. “Ah, we’re on a new diet. No alcohol, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sicheng repeated softly. A parrot. A ghost of the young man he used to be.

It was sad. Better to cut this short.

Yuta rose from his chair. “I’ll see you at the game, then?”

Sicheng ran his thumb over the edge of a photo. Ten’s aura skittered across the image like loose glitter falling away. There, and then not. Like the boy in the photograph, his wide grin a testament to the unstoppable passing of youth.

“Save a spot,” Ten said, ever so sweet, his hand curled around Sicheng’s bicep as the younger man stood.

Yuta took the stack of photos back from his friend, waited for the last of Ten’s aura to seep out of the office, and tossed them into the drawer. For another day.

Though the rain had passed, there was something heavy and wet that hung in the over the pitch.

Donghyuck was not on the field, as he had expected. He sat on the hard bench, extending and shaking his legs out one at a time whenever they threatened to fall asleep, the buzzing of his nerves travelling up his toes.

He watched dutifully for number Five in the scrum, ignoring the twin gazes he felt pinned on his own Twenty-Two on his back.

He was part of a team. He boarded up a wall between himself in the present and his personal issues that sat in the back of the bleachers.

 _“I hope we’ll see you on the pitch, Donghyuck,”_ Mark had said, soft and sweet in his ear. Donghyuck’s insides vibrated at an intensity unknown to earth the whole way to the locker room.

He still hadn’t spoken to Renjun. He avoided the dining hall. Mark was putting in the work for both of them, then, but it was too hot, too fast, too much for Donghyuck to hold without dropping, so he set it down purposefully. He’d pick it up again later, after they’d won this game.

He hopped to his feet alongside his teammates as a conversion earned Norton another neat two points. The sound of the cheers was thunderous, flooding his head with static. The air crackled around him. He felt like he could grab the energy surrounding him like a tangible thing, take a bite out of it.

The high shattered as his senses caught up to the present.

Number Five was on the ground – a tackle gone wrong?

 _It was just a tap_ , someone on the bench said, but Jeno hadn’t gotten up yet.

Coach grabbed Donghyuck’s shoulder before he could run onto the pitch – Jeno was already being escorted away to the locker rooms to get the medical attention he needed, he knew that, he was _fine._

It was just a tap.

Jaemin was two steps from the locker room door when he blacked out.

 _Again,_ he whispered all the way done the bleachers, _again again again again_.

The cycle continued. He hadn’t even realized his mouth was moving until he felt the darkness swirling over his head and then – and then he was gone.

No room for dreams in the darkness. There was no space for himself, just the truth. Just death.

At least he was wearing shoes.

He woke up in the woods.

The sky was darker than before – no longer blue, just the shadows of the trees and the shadow of the night beyond them. Too far. Unreachable.

He breathed in. The air was thick and metallic.

There was something in his hand.

Which way was the road? He turned on the spot – right, left, and…was this right again? Testing, he took a step—

Something caught his foot, sent him flying – not flying, tripping, just falling – and the impact of the ground knocked the air from his lungs, left him gasping in the dirt and leaves.

 _“Fuck,”_ Jaemin wheezed, scrabbling in the mud to sit up again and – what was that? Under his hands, something warm.

He blinked fast, clearing the multicolored lights of his fall from his vision but it was so _dark._

What – who?

A person.

A body.

A boy.

The knife in Jaemin’s hand fell.

He was still warm, so new, so alive Jaemin couldn’t accept he was dead. He scrambled in the dark to find a pulse, hands slicking with the blood that covered the boy’s torso – his chest, his stomach, littered with puncture wounds, deliberate, no mistaking the fatality under Jaemin’s hands – at his hands – Jaemin fell back again.

All he could hear was the rush of blood inside his own head. He moved his hands in front of his face – they were dark – they looked like his hands when he was a boy, when his family vacationed in America that summer, and he spent days with his nanny on the coast, picking berries that stained his skin red, purple –

The boy was dead.

Jaemin picked up the knife again, with hands that did not belong to him, and walked away.

The night was still.

He could hear nothing.

_A cycle._

_Again._

_Again._

_Again._

_Ten years past – the cycle renewed._

He followed the road when he came to it, feet carrying him in some unknown direction, and he arrived at the edge of the village, like always.

Routines were almost impossible to break.

He always had a few coins in his pockets.

The street was empty, save for him. He waited until the pedestrian green light sign shone to cross the road.

In the phone booth, he grasped the cold, black receiver in one hand, smearing sticky blood over the plastic.

He stared at the streetlights glinting off the sharp knife and waited for the ringing to stop.

When it did, when he answered the call, Jaemin exhaled, leaning his body heavily against the glass wall of the booth, and finally let himself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twt - @jpseudy


	8. pt. viii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy belated valentines day <3 sorry about this <3

Donghyuck couldn’t get the sound of Kunhang screaming out of his head.

After the game, Donghyuck followed his team into the locker room. The anxious energy that descended over Norton leading up to the game had vanished, replaced by infectious excitement over their win. He’d looked for Jeno, but his friend had already been taken to the infirmary to receive treatment for his sprained ankle.

Instead, Donghyuck was swept away by his teammates, Yukhei’s arms tight around his as he lifted him off his feet in a congratulatory hug – finally off the bench, finally one of Norton’s finest. He could get used to this.

He didn’t see any of them until he got to the party, the student lounge milling with boys. They spilled out into the halls, voices loud and carrying. 

Donghyuck noted the absence of faculty, how they were left on their own to their celebration and subsequent mischief. Maybe this was the privilege of being a winner, he thought, the freedom to do whatever you wanted.

Mark caught him by the hand before Donghyuck could lose himself in the crowd.

“Donghyuck,” he said. 

He let go of his hand as soon as Donghyuck turned to look at him. 

What a coward, Donghyuck thought, after everything they’de shared with each other, he was still too scared to touch him.

“Renjun and I were looking for you,” Mark said – and maybe Donghyuck was the coward.

Maybe they all were. He looked behind Mark and didn’t see Renjun’s dark eyes or his slanted smile, he just saw other Norton boys passing behind him.

“I heard someone spiked the Gatorade,” Donghyuck said, and Mark followed him, only just managing to stick close through the crowd of their peers.

They didn’t find the drinks before it started, before the cry cut over the sound of London rapper that bursts from Yukhei’s Bluetooth speakers. 

At first, it didn't register. When it did, Donghyuck’s heart beat faster.

“What’s that?” He asked, grabbing Mark’s arm, then, “We should get out of here.”

Mark’s face had gone pale, bloodless, his eyes wide. 

For a moment he was a boy who had broken his mother’s favorite lamp and just heard her arrive home. For a moment, he was Donghyuck realizing he could go far away, all the way across the world. For a moment, Mark looked like he’d seen death waiting for him on the other side of the room.

Following his gaze, Donghyuck only saw Kunhang, curled over himself like he’d been mortally wounded as he screamed, face pressed into the carpet.

The boys around them stepped back, opening a circle around him like he was the ritualistic sacrifice, the rabbit, the sheep.

Donghyuck wanted to run. 

Mark broke from him. Donghyuck watched as Mark crouched in front of Kunhang, began gathering him in his arms, like he was gathering a spool of thread that couldn’t stop itself from unraveling. Donghyuck could imagine the tangles in the string from Mark’s quick hands that pulled Kunhang off the ground.

Kunhang leaned into Mark with all his weight, mouth open and groaning into his shoulder.

Running wasn’t an option anymore.

Donghyuck crossed the room. He knelt in front of Mark and Kunhang. “What do we do? The infirmary?”

“We just need to get him out of here,” Mark said, his words quiet, just for Donghyuck’s ears. Sweat had started gathering along his hairline.

Kunhang mumbled unintelligibly into Mark’s shoulder. There was a growing spot on his shirt, damp from his cousin’s face. As Donghyuck helped them both up, gripping Kunhang’s arm tightly, Kunhang’s head lolled toward him, and he was startled to see the tears streaming down his cheeks, the redness in his eyes.

“We have to get him out,” Mark said again.

Donghyuck raised his head. Classmates surrounded them, their expressions wary and hungry with curiosity. 

Donghyuck jerked his chin to the side, his lips set in a firm line. They moved.

Mark looked like he was close to passing out, but life sprang out of him as they pushed into the bathroom down the hall. The door swung hard as they lifted Hendery into the room, banging against the stall nearest, and a faint yelp sounded from inside. 

"Fuck, who's in here?" Mark asked, setting Hendery down on the floor by the sinks. 

Hendery groaned as he sank onto the cool tiles, his eyes rolling up in his sockets as he clutched at his chest and stomach. 

"Um," the voice said, followed by a toilet flushing. 

Donghyuck put his hands on his hips to disguise their shaking and curled up his lip as the door opened.

Yangyang blinked at them, shocked enough by the chill in the room, but his expression darkened at the sight of Hendery huddled in a ball on the floor, another sob climbing out his throat to echo around the otherwise empty restroom.

"Hey, what the f-"

He didn't get to finish. Donghyuck grabbed his arm and hauled him back to the door. 

Yangyang wasn't weak, he put up a struggle and might have pushed Donghyuck away if it wasn't for the swell of heat in Donghyuck's limbs, the overwhelming urge to get him  _ out _ as soon as possible. 

He wasn't using his head anymore, it felt like all the thoughts in his head had melted away and were replaced by a wild instinct to  _ protect _ . 

"Go back to the party," Donghyuck said as he pushed Yangyang out the door.

"What are you doing to him?" Yangyang asked. 

He stuck one foot between the door and the frame, which prevented Donghyuck from closing it. Donghyuck wasn't sure himself what was going on, but he trusted Mark. He didn't know why. He wasn't sure Mark had yet done anything to earn it. But it felt like flames were tickling his fingertips, his wrists sparked with an energy that had no way to go but out. 

He moved to place his hand on Yangyang's chest. He just wanted him to leave. He didn't even push him.

Yet Yangyang flew back against the hallway wall like Donghyuck had swung a sledgehammer at his chest. They stared at each other, Yangyang's eyes wide with pain and surprise as he struggled to stand again, wheezing from the force of the blow.

"Sorry," Donghyuck managed.  _ Stupid. _ He closed the door and locked it. The hot feeling had subsided, dulled to a comforting warmth. He didn’t feel at all eased by that.

He hadn't yet turned around when Hendery screamed again, his faint sobs growing into a near howl. The heat in Donghyuck's palms began to grow again. He swiped them over his shirt like his palms were just sweating and gasped as dark singe marks were left on the kit, just the size and shape of his hands. 

"Oh, fuck, what the fuck?" He whispered.

"Talk to me," Mark pleaded, his knees pressing into the dirty tile as he crouched beside Hendery. 

His cousin might have responded if he wasn't baring his teeth in agony, his jaw tight against his own scream, trying to shove it back down wherever it had come from. His eyes rolled toward Donghyuck at the door and they said  _ please. _

What was he supposed to do?

Mark passed his hand over Hendery's chest, moved both palms over his shoulders, down his arms, their muscles flexed and pulsing, and took Hendery's hands in his own. His fingers went white and bloodless in Hendery's grip, but the tension didn't leave his body. 

"Mark," Donghyuck tried. He stepped forward.

If Yangyang had been hit by a strong force, this was its mother -- all Donghyuck could think was  _ what-- _ before he lay flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him. It didn't hurt. Honestly, his worst bruises would still be from the game. And it only took a moment for him to catch his breath, the next he was getting to his feet again, crossing the distance between himself and the other two.

Mark had been pushed back too, and he sat half in-half out of an open stall, looking dazed, sweat dripping down the bridge of his nose onto his shaking hands. 

"Where is he?" Hendery rasped. He'd clawed his uniform button down away from his body and his torso was littered with marks from his own nails, ten lines running parallel across his skin. "Mark-"

"I don't know," Mark stammered. He looked down at his hands. His eyes were wide, something wet escaped from them down the dip in his cheek, curving over his top lip to join the sweat there.

“Mark,” Donghyuck said.

Mark reacted violently to the sound of Donghyuck’s voice, startled further as his head smacked back against the door of the stall. At the same time, the mirrors above the sink cracked and the glass rained down into the sink, falling into Kunhang’s hair, but he hardly noticed, too overtaken by the sobs already racking his body.

The room shook around them, the floor trembled with the same vibrations that shuddered down Kunhang’s spine as he curled into a ball on the floor. Donghyuck had never experienced an earthquake, but his instincts told him to grab onto Mark’s arm. 

The fire returned, licking down his limbs and covering them both in white hot heat -- it spread from his fingers over Mark’s skin, a neon red that Donghyuck saw in flashes as the sound of Kunhang’s wails pulsed in his ears. 

Mark’s eyes met his through the haze of heat that covered them. Donghyuck expected the same heart pounding adrenaline that filled his chest to show in Mark’s expression, but all he saw was his parted lips, the peace that washed over Mark’s face like he was being sung a sweet lullaby. 

Around them, the room seemed to fall apart. Air rushed past Donghyuck’s ears in roaring waves. Kunhang fell quiet and, with his gaze fixed on Mark, Donghyuck felt his own awareness blinking out. And the world went dark.

  
  


“Xiaojun,” Jaemin said first.

Jeno’s hands fluttered over Jaemin’s body, not quite touching him, not while he still held the knife. He knew the curb was hard under Jaemin, the night was cold, but he couldn’t seem to focus on any of it long enough to mind. 

“Are you hurt?” Jeno asked. Internally, he cringed at the trembling voice that passed his lips, but nothing mattered but the blood covering the boy in front of him. “What happened? Where did you- are you hurt?”

Jaemin repeated himself, much quieter, said, “Xiaojun.”

The absence of emotion in his eyes reminded Jeno of every time Jaemin saw something he hated. It wasn’t real hatred, after all, but a lack of interest that left Jaemin’s gaze unfocused and empty. It was the way he avoided Jeno’s questions and wouldn’t meet his eyes every time he had come to pick him up in the middle of the night. 

Except, he’d never been covered in blood those times, and he’d never been holding a knife.

“Are you hurt?” Jeno asked once more, the whine in his tone pulling Jaemin’s face up as if Jeno had reached out and gripped his chin.

Jaemin opened his mouth, but closed it again soon after, answerless. He didn’t look like he was dying, but he didn’t look quite alive either.

They couldn’t just sit on the side of the road like that though. It was late, but eventually someone would see them and ask questions.

Jeno wasn’t sure what Jaemin did, he had no real idea of what had happened that could make any logical sense, but dread that rushed through his chest down to his stomach, twisted his organs up and threatened to spit them out, and all he knew was that he needed to get them out of here.

It was never how he imagined slipping his hand into Jaemin’s, but he took the knife from him, replacing it in Jaemin’s grip with his own hand, and pulled him to the car. 

All the air in his lungs had frozen, but he knew the drive to Norton by heart. This village had become a home. He wondered if that would have to change.

  
  


The grounds of Norton were too quiet. Jeno heard his own footsteps like thundercracks as he guided Jaemin back to their dorm. 

“We should get you cleaned up,” Jeno heard himself say, and then he’d tucked his hands in as close as Jaemin would let him to his sides, led him down the hall to the shared hall bathroom.

Everyone should have still been at the after party or asleep, but it didn’t stop Jeno’s heart from racing.

Jaemin didn’t do much to help out. He walked only because Jeno forced him to, and stood uselessly inside the doorway of the bathroom until Jeno hip checked him out of the way in his rush to close the door.

“Shower,” Jeno directed, flipping the lock on the doorknob.

Jaemin didn’t respond, not even to start taking his clothes off. At first, when Jeno touched him, he flinched so Jeno waited, counting to three before he tried again, and then Jaemin let him.

Jeno went slow, hands careful wherever they touched Jaemin, from the base of his throat down to his hips as he unbuttoned Jaemin’s shirt, knuckles bumping over his torso. 

Peeling the blood and mud soaked shirt off only revealed the stark line around Jaemin’s wrists where the cuffs of his sleeves kept his arms mostly clean. Jeno balled up the shirt, stuffed it into the trash. He’d have to deal with that later – for now, the boy still standing in the middle of the bathroom, eying him like something brand new.

Jeno was not equipped to deal with this.

When he was younger, just a kid at home in the two-bedroom flat his parents could barely afford, he’d get so frustrated at the simplest of tasks. 

His mother would tell him to brush his teeth before he left for school, only for him to be intercepted by his father on the way to the bathroom who would instruct him to get his shoes on and hurry outside before he was late – it was moments like these, the complication of multiple tasks, that would reduce Jeno to tears, blinking blurrily at himself in the mirror over the sink as he struggled to brush his teeth and pull his sneakers on with his other hand at the same time. 

And when he wasn’t told, he went through the motions slowly, uncertain. It took a lot of Jeno to start guiding himself through life. He wasn’t sure he could be responsible for Jaemin, too, but he would try. He didn’t have any doubts about that.

The water poured onto Jaemin’s head, his hair plastered to the angles of his face, over the soft curve of his face that Jeno would watch in assemblies for a telltale quirk of his lips.

_ You stare so much, Lee, you’re going to get in trouble for it one day. _

Jeno had thought he would gladly run into any trouble on Jaemin’s behalf — whatever he wanted of Jeno’s was his, that was the promise Jeno had made to himself the first time he saw Jaemin wave goodbye to his mother as she left for one of her many vacations, leaving them all alone on the Na estate, save for the servants. 

He would never leave Jaemin alone, Jeno thought, the distance in Jaemin’s eyes could never be on account of his own actions.

Was this the trouble he’d promised himself?

He met Jaemin’s eyes, but the lack of depth in them made his stomach turn. This time, Jaemin had left him. He had to bring him back home from the wilderness.

Jeno toed his shoes off, gritting back the sharp pain shooting up his leg from his sprained ankle. Up until this point, the pain had remained in the back of his mind. As adrenaline had started easing out of his body, he felt heavy and slow. His joints ached.

He didn’t bother with the rest of his clothes, stepping into the shower after Jaemin in his t-shirt and jeans, the ACE bandage wrapped tightly around the foot he tried to keep raised even as he stepped under the water.

Jaemin surveyed him like something new. 

Jeno found himself cowing under that gaze, but ignored the discomfort of his wet shirt sticking to his skin as he pumped shampoo into his palm.

“Eyes closed,” he directed gently. Jaemin’s eyes fell shut, and Jeno could fool himself briefly into thinking everything was alright.

He ran his fingers through Jaemin’s hair, gentle at first, too careful, before he began to rub more vigorously to clean the forest from his beautiful dark hair. Water ran down Jaemin’s face, streaking through the dried blood, now brown, that had dried crusted over his jaw.

Maybe Jeno wasn’t strong enough for this. He could hold Jaemin upright, could keep his arm around his shoulders like this, but could his arms alone keep Jaemin safe from everything outside them?

“What happened?” He heard himself asking, the words falling out of his mouth before he could swallow them. Jaemin didn’t react except to tip his head back, letting the water splash over his face, as if he could escape the question by drowning.

There was little use trying to escape this, Jeno thought, when he had a bloody knife hidden between his mattress and box spring.

Jeno’s breath trembled on the way out. “You have to say something.”

When Jaemin opened his eyes again, they were red-rimmed, and Jeno realized that the water running down his freshly cleaned cheeks wasn’t from the shower alone.

“Xiaojun,” Jaemin said, “I killed him.”

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Jeno said, but his assurances stuttered over the all too fresh image of the knife in Jaemin’s hand, the blood and dirt swirling down the drain at their feet, and even he heard how flat the statement sounded.

Jaemin was all edges. He’d grown into a man with teeth sharp enough to sink through skin. But it was just a wall to protect himself, a spiky defense that kept even Jeno away for months. Or maybe that’s just what Jeno hoped.

In the quiet of the bathroom, under Jeno’s attention, Jaemin cried.

Jeno raised his hand to Jaemin’s face. His thumb slipped over his cheek, disrupting the flow of tears running down them. “Jaemin--”

“I saw it,” Jaemin said, his voice no more than a whisper above the sound of the water splattering over the tiles, “I saw it happen, over and over, and I couldn’t stop it.”

He still looked beautiful, Jeno thought, covered in grime and death. Jeno didn’t think that someone so beautiful could really do wrong, but maybe Jeno was dumber than he though. Maybe he was a fool.

His chest ached. His ankle throbbed. He dropped his hand away from Jaemin’s face and reached for the soap again. “We’ll fix it, whatever happened.”

Jaemin turned away from him, his back red from the hot water, and Jeno finished cleaning his skin. 

“It’ll be okay,” Jeno said. He didn’t think Jaemin was listening anymore. He wasn’t sure it would matter if he was.

Renjun’s voice was the first thing Donghyuck registered as he awoke. First, the soft tones of Renjun’s voice that said Mark was in the room, then the cold fingers pressed to his wrist, as if checking for a pulse.

His head swam with the aftereffects of the moments before Donghyuck blacked out. He couldn’t quite make sense of the conflicting images that flipped through his brain -- the mirrors shattering, the force that sent Yangyang flying out of the room, the heat that enveloped himself and Mark when they touched, Kunhang’s screams.

_ Hendery _ Donghyuck caught the name from Renjun’s words, and his heart jumped. The hand on his slipped up his arm not a second later, and squeezed his elbow.

“You’re awake,” Renjun said, not a question at all. 

Donghyuck didn’t feel ready to open his eyes. He thought he’d like for the whole night to be a dream. Maybe he got hit in the head during the game. Maybe the whole week had been a fever dream, and he was laying sick in the infirmary, and Renjun wasn’t dead at all or waiting for him to look at him and speak to him.

At least he knew now why Renjun was always so cool to the touch. But the weight of his hand on Donghyuck’s arm was as heavy as anyone’s would be, and the tug of curiosity overcame any confusion Donghyuck had over the spiritual plane of existence.

He blinked his eyes open. The room came into focus at once, Mark and Renjun’s room that had always felt so warm. He was laying on the bed, Renjun sitting beside him. 

“Mark,” Donghyuck said. His mouth felt dry and tacky, but, there he was, too, stepping away from his desk to stand beside the bed.

“Hey,” Mark said quietly, too quiet to be normal. Even in the dim, yellow light of the dorm, the tips of his ears were red. 

“What-” Donghyuck started, but he was not sure what he really wanted to ask. There was too much to fit into a single question, and his thoughts bounced off the sides of his skull like ping pong balls. 

“You passed out in the bathroom,” Renjun explained like it wasn’t obvious enough. Still, his voice was too gentle to be speaking to Donghyuck, too sweet to make any sense, and a moment later Renjun took his hand away besides, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Donghyuck turned his face away from Mark, shifting an inch closer to Renjun. He lifted one hand from where he’d twisted it into the sheets, and rested it on Renjun’s knee. He twisted his mouth into something he hoped was close to a smile, something close to what an apology might sound like if he could get his brain to work.

Renjun was surprised -- that was a first. It took a moment for him to uncross his arms, but when he did he laid his hand over Donghyuck’s, and Donghyuck thought that they’d be okay, probably. 

“Jeno called,” Mark said. “We should go to their room.”

“Now?” Donghyuck asked. He felt the weight of the night tugging his eyelids closed again already.

“Yeah,” Renjun said, “now would be best.”

  
  


Jeno was as polite as ever.

He held the door open for them, smiling as they entered, although the curve of his lips looked uneven and awkward on the rest of his face. “Thanks for coming.”

“Of course,” Mark said. He walked past him like Jeno wasn’t standing there with damp hair, damp clothes, his bandaged ankle stiff and swollen. 

Donghyuck followed, frowning.

Jaemin sat on the edge of his bed, his hands flat on his thighs as he stared at the floor between his feet. Even at his most unbearable, Donghyuck had never seen Jaemin sit so still before. 

“What happened?” He asked. Neither Mark nor Renjun had filled him in on the way over.

Jeno’s gaze cut across to Jaemin, whose fingers had curled into his palms, two tight fists on his thighs. Otherwise, he remained still.

Mark stood in the center of the room. Exhaustion had settled into his eyes, over the slope of his lips. He looked ten years older than he was then, the night shadowing his gaze as he looked down at Jaemin. 

“Dejun is dead,” Mark said, “isn’t he?”

_ Dead? Dejun? _ Donghyuck blinked at them, and then to Jeno, looking for confirmation that he hadn’t heard wrong -- he wished he had. 

He hadn’t.

Jaemin looked up at him, and Donghyuck saw for the first time the tears that tracked pitifully down his cheeks. 

“He’s dead,” Jaemin said, “I killed him.”

Donghyuck’s head spun. He sat on the bed opposite Jaemin’s -- Jeno’s, his vision blurring as the words sink in. Someone was dead, someone he knew. Xiaojun -- Dejun -- the elegant faced boy who offered him a place to sit in silence, who told him to be careful. It didn’t sound right, it didn’t fit into the puzzle of life at Norton that he knew.

He thought of Kunhang’s screams, the sobs that shook the room, 

“I know,” Mark said.

And that-- that couldn’t be right either.

Jeno gasped, a sharp intake of breath from the corner of the room by the door where he still stood. Beside him, Renjun sucked his lower lip into his mouth as if biting down to keep from spilling any secrets.

But that wasn’t right. Jaemin couldn’t kill anyone. He excelled in pettiness and unfounded glaring, not murder.

Jerkily, Jaemin stood. His hands hung at his sides, his shoulders drooped, his whole body weighed down with the crime he couldn’t have committed. Donghyuck’s mind raced against the clock he could nearly hear ticking down.

“You didn’t kill him,” Donghyuck said, like he knew. 

How could he know? He didn’t even know Dejun was dead until a moment ago. Still, he knew. It sounded like a fact as he said it and maybe it was the heft in his belief that made it true. His words settled thickly over the room.

Jaemin stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. Then, all at once, the careful mold of his face broke.

Jaemin crouched on the floor in front of Donghyuck, and his tears soaked into the knee of his dirty rugby kit, sinking hot and fast into the fabric. It wasn’t the tears that struck Donghyuck and made the room fall silent. Jaemin’s low groan, stretching into a long, broken wail permeated the air, making them all stare, jaws slack as he cried. 

Donghyuck didn’t know how it fell to him to take care of Jaemin Na, but the same protective urge swelled in him as it had in the bathroom with Mark. He laid his hand flat on the back of Jaemin’s neck, his skin burning as hot as Jaemin’s tears.

If Jaemin was the dog limping to isolation to die, Jeno looked like its owner wondering how to put it out of its misery. Uncomfortable, every boy looked away, even Renjun, whose presence in the room became more and more shadow like the more that Jaemin sobbed into Donghyuck’s lap. Instead, Donghyuck gripped Jaemin’s shoulders, a touch bordering with unsurety—should he pull him closer or shove him away?

Donghyuck watched the moment Jeno dragged himself out of his discomfort, saw the effort it took for him to look at the boy on the floor and move to him again. 

When Jeno kneeled on the floor behind Jaemin and pulled him away, the sound stopped entirely. Jaemin sunk into Jeno like a second skin, his body crumpling into Jeno’s arms, and Jeno held him like he was so small, the awkward weight of a young man none too heavy for Jeno to bear, at least if it was Jaemin.

It was like Donghyuck could see them both for the first time. The jealous bite in Jaemin’s words up until this night rang with new clarity. Everything was more clear as he eyed Jaemin taking deep gulps of air, his face pressed into Jeno’s chest as Jeno curled himself around Jaemin as if he could form a hard, protective shell over them both. 

When Donghyuck looked up to meet Mark’s gaze, he found him looking at Renjun. And everything was under light, each moment fully out of the darkness.

It was big and meaningless at this moment. Jeno loved Jaemin. Mark lovedRenjun. Kunhang loved Dejun but it didn’t matter now, because Dejun was just a body in the woods waiting to be discovered. 

Donghyuck wondered where Renjun’s bones laid, who he left behind. He wondered if he’d leave anyone behind, if they’d cry to fill the hollow gaps in their chest, or if his presence in the room was a bulging abscess, waiting to be cut off.

Is it selfish, he wondered, to witness all this grief, and just want someone to be looking back at him?

“He didn’t kill him,” Renjun said. Donghyuck turned to his voice, found his gaze hot on his cheek.

It sounded just as factual coming from him.

Banging on the door shook Donghyuck. He sat up straighter, wiped his face as it was him who had been crying. 

He, Jeno, and Mark glanced at each other. There would be no reason for anyone to come to Jeno and Jaemin’s room this late -- they were all there. 

“Oh,” Donghyuck said. 

Renjun might have been a mind reader for how quickly he caught onto Donghyuck’s realization. He opened the door, letting Chenle and Jisung rush in. 

With both hands, Chenle clutched an old newspaper to his chest. His shoulders heaved like he’d run all the way across campus. Beside him, Jisung ran his hands through his hair, which had clearly been under attack for some time.

“They found a body in the woods,” Jisung said.

“We know,” Mark said. He turned away to face the window, even though the blinds were drawn. Tension kept his shoulders hunched. 

Renjun stared at the paper in Chenle’s hands and Chenle stared back. 

“Want to see it?” Chenle asked. There was an odd bubble of joy that popped into his voice. 

“No,” Renjun said.

“Are you sure?” Chenle asked. “It’s your obituary.”

  
  


The sun had risen a few hours before they decided to catch some sleep. 

Donghyuck’s eyes were heavy in their sockets and kept getting pulled closed by a force that seemed outside himself. The tired crept into all his joints and made them ache, the effect of the hard won rugby game finally settling into his bones now that the adrenaline of the night had worn off. 

He couldn’t imagine what Jeno must be feeling, but his other friend didn’t express it. Complaints spread over Donghyuck’s tongue, but a misplaced whine in this setting wouldn’t break the tension, only would make Mark glance at him with that surprised disapproval he sometimes shot Jaemin. 

“We should all get some rest,” Mark said as he stood.

It took a moment for the rest of them to stir, their minds clouded. Jeno and Jaemin stood last. It was their room, after all, and Donghyuck didn’t expect them to get off the floor at all, especially now that Jaemin had calmed down, his tear stained cheeks and slumped shoulders the only remaining proof of his cries. 

Jeno helped Jaemin to his feet, his arm loosely slung around his waist, one hand around Jaemin’s wrist. Jaemin turned his body toward him, the fabric of Jeno’s shirt held in the firm clutch of Jaemin’s fingers.

“Thanks for coming,” Jeno said, polite as the host of the most morbid dinner party ever. He avoided looking at Renjun the same way Jaemin always had.

“We’ll talk more later,” Mark said. He took a breath to continue, his gaze sliding over Jaemin, but didn’t say anymore, stepping out the door. 

Did he really think Jaemin could have killed Dejun? Did he think Jaemin could have killed anyone?

Donghyuck used to think that Jaemin was the devil incarnate, but now it seemed like a childish rivalry, one that was founded in nothing but jealousy and would mean little years from now. He couldn’t even feel the same heat rising in his chest now, when he looked at Jaemin, just something gray and numb. 

In the back of his mind, he heard Jaemin’s rasping whisper as he’d grabbed Donghyuck’s arms in his nanny’s old bedroom. It seemed like years ago. Everything from the beginning of the semester seemed like it must hardly matter, but Donghyuck knew there was something important that had happened that night between them.

But what?

Before Donghyuck could follow the rest out of the room, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Jaemin’s eyes were as dark as Dejun’s in Donghyuck’s memory. What had they seen?

“Can we-?” Jaemin asked. His voice was hoarse, torn to shreds.

Donghyuck nodded and waited for Jaemin to join him in the hall, but neither of them had the chance to speak before a body pushed between them, knocking Jaemin back. He didn’t fall, just stumbled awkwardly until he caught himself on the door, and Donghyuck figured it was Kunhang’s exhaustion alone that kept him from doing any real damage to the other boy.

It was hardly a choice, to step between them, and Donghyuck faced his roommate with his arms stretched out between them, keeping him at bay. 

“How do you know?” Donghyuck asked. A stupid question, but one he needed an answer for.

“How could I not know?” Kunghang spat out. “I felt it happen. His death is all over him.”

It was like layers were in the process of being removed from Donghyuck’s sight, one at a time. First, there was nothing. Then, he could see that shadows that stained Jaemin’s hands and arms. 

The air was cooler around him, not like the cold that clung to Renjun’s being, but a sweeter chill, faint like it had only been rubbed off on Jaemin’s skin.

It was entirely at odds with the warmth Donghyuck had felt all night, at every touch of his and Mark’s skin, at every hint of trouble. Pressure built behind his eyes, the beginning of a headache nearly as overwhelming as the whole night had been.

Kunhang lunged again, the air around him sparking weakly, but someone grabbed him back before Donghyuck could move to stop him.

Faculty shouldn’t have been up so early, Donghyuck thought, not in the dorms, but there was a knowingness in Sicheng’s expression that calmed him. 

Sicheng’s hand tightened around Kunhang’s arm, but his gaze remained on Donghyuck, searching, noticing. It was only then that Donghyuck saw the same emptiness in Kunhang’s face in his teacher’s. He had assumed it was exhaustion that stole the light from Sicheng’s eyes, but with the two of them side by side it was much clearer.

These were two men who had seen death and escaped it with their lives, but lost their souls. Was that really living?

Donghyuck wondered, for a moment, who Sicheng had lost that had left such a hole in him. The realization felt like a blow to the head with a blunt object. The heat that burned his hands fizzled out. All he could do was stare back at him, the knowledge lodged in his throat. 

Could Sicheng see Renjun? Had he seen him since?

Renjun’s presence felt so large that Donghyuck couldn’t imagine knowing him to feel anything like a loss. He felt a little like a thief, then, knowing that Renjun’s existence was something of his now. How was he worthy, and Sicheng not?

“I know what he did,” Kunhang said, his voice low. “He’ll get the justice he deserves.”

It should have felt cold, that threat, but Donghyuck registered it as faintly as a cool breeze washing over his face. Behind him, he felt Jaemin’s body sway slightly, so he reached back to steady him, his hand circling the defendant’s wrist.

“Justice doesn’t involve Jaemin,” Donghyuck said. “You should go home.”

“He’s right,” Sicheng said, his voice as calm as ever despite the whiteknuckled grip he had on Kunhang’s arm, “it’s time to go home. It’s not safe here for you anymore.”

“There’s nowhere safe now,” Kunhang said. The defeat in his voice stung more than Donghyuck anticipated, but he tried not to show it, tried to stay strong for the pitiful boy standing behind him.

He watched down the hallway as his teacher accompanied his roommate back to their room. The door closed behind Kunhang, and Sicheng stood outside, making a call.

“You should stay inside,” Donghyuck told Jaemin. “Don’t go anywhere alone.”

It was the first time Jaemin hadn’t argued with him. He nodded, and stepped back into the room, where Jeno watched him warily.

Donghyuck couldn’t go back to his own room. 

He ran down the stairs and out into the courtyard between the dorms, crossing the winding paths and flowerbeds in quick strides. The distance between his hall and Mark’s dorm passed without notice, his head too full of  _ Dejun, Jaemin, Kunhang, Renjun, death _ _._

Who would kill Dejun? And why? And what was happening to him that caused this fire, that showed him the unseen?

His fist against the door matched the pounding in his own head. He didn’t let Mark make any excuses this time -- he wouldn’t let Renjun distract him either.

“You have to tell me,” Donghyuck said, “tell me everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are very appreciated <33
> 
> you can find me on twitter @jpseudy (also on cc)


	9. pt. ix

The first time Kunhang showed his ability to manipulate energy, he was nine and throwing a fit. 

Mark had watched from his bed while Kunhang cried and toys spun around the room. It was a big room. It was a big fit. Mark might have been afraid of being hit if he’d known what being afraid was like, but he was too young with too much will within him to raise a brow at anything but Kunhang’s poor temper.

He’d heard his older cousins discuss the first times they’d felt their magic bubbling up under their skin, or exercised their will accidentally -- a lot of teachers who had been muted, many candy bars and pencils whipping from the shelves of the check out lines and tucking themselves mysteriously into pockets. He didn’t have a story to trade if anyone would ask. They never did anyway.

Everyone knew that Mark Lee was a strong mage. He’d been born strong. Rumor had it he’d healed his sick and dying mother at the age of two, and maybe that was why his parents were so doting on him, why he was so spoiled. Mark didn’t really know, but he loved his parents. They loved him too. Despite any rumors, he knew they would love him if he didn’t have an ounce of will in his body. 

The only trouble for Mark was his Guard. He didn’t have one.

Perhaps Mark had been afraid before, but he hadn’t connected the feeling to anything until he heard Kunhang screaming and the dots of his memories all aligned and connected, the rush of dread that shot down his spine. He’d only heard someone scream like that once before.

  
  


The candles winked like stars around the room. It was late, nearly midnight, and the warmth of the day had vanished as the night cold sunk into the dirt and Mark’s flesh. Even in his suit jacket, the house was too cold, but it was tradition to not use power during ceremonies so the family could feel closer to their ancestors. It seemed a little silly to Mark, but he would listen to his parents even though his hands would twitch toward his pockets on their own accord, out of habit of the gameboy usually hidden away for family gatherings like this. They were boring -- apart from the ceremony itself. It was a glorified family reunion, but none of the few kids liked talking to him that much anyway. 

They often came to a different country every year, cycling through family estates for the excuse of a few weeks vacation. Mark was lucky that it was a school holiday already, since missing that much school time was always annoying, but he was only eight, he’d always have more time. 

The low chatter that filled the room cut off abruptly after the first scream. It was like nothing Mark had heard before, that scream. The pleading cries that followed chilled the air an additional ten degrees. 

The moment Renjun died, Sicheng had felt it. His soul tore into pieces that shattered his energy and will. They all knew he’d never really recover, he’d never be the bright-eyed, charming boy he used to be -- they could all hear it in the way he screamed.

  
  


If that was the result of losing a guard, Mark secretly hoped he’d never find one. For both their sakes. 

And then he did. And it was him.

While Mark’s grieving cousin had torn apart the bathroom, Donghyuck had wrapped Mark in his arms, smothered him with an aura that burned like fire, but tickled Mark’s skin as harmlessly as a kitten’s whiskers.

As Mark inhaled the flames, he clung to Donghyuck. He allowed himself to reach out and touch for the first time in his life. And he wasn’t sure he could let go again.

  
  


Donghyuck sat perched on the edge of Mark’s desk, his arms crossed over his chest. 

Mark had refused to sit when Donghyuck had, but Renjun had sprawled over the mattresses, his body looking far too resigned for someone that should not have felt exhaustion. 

Since Donghyuck had accepted the state of Renjun’s existence, he’d started to notice little things like the unnatural speed of his movements, the way shadows wept under his eyes and played around his hands and feet. Since earlier in the night, he’d noticed, too, how in the corner of his vision his own limbs pulsed with the same formless apparition. His was dim, but still brighter than Renjun’s, and so light it bore no weight. To Donghyuck, it seemed like the shadows dragged on Renjun’s already slender frame.

Whatever he was, whatever  _ they _ were, Mark was something different.

He didn’t want to be the one who spoke first, but Mark’s magnetism drew his voice out just like he always drew him closer, without any effort on his part. 

“So you’re…” Donghyuck started. He didn’t know what he wanted to ask exactly.

Mark’s gaze slid up Donghyuck’s body from his feet, met his eyes. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. 

The quiet stretched, ballooned. 

“We say...mage.”

_ Pop. _

“Like...a wizard?” 

Mark sighed. “I guess. Mage is better.”

“And I’m…” Donghyuck tried. He waited for the answer, found it as Renjun sat up and looked at him.

“You’re Donghyuck,” Renjun said. “You don’t have to be anything else if you don’t want to be.”

Donghyuck wasn’t sure that was exactly true. But for Renjun, who didn’t have the choice, it seemed important that Donghyuck knew his options.

If his options were independence or Mark, though, he was not sure that he had to think about it much. 

There was a sharp hook in his chest tugging him forward. At his core, the instinct to protect the boy in front of him settled into the place Donghyuck’s subtle anger had been carving in his chest his whole life. He’d been running from his anger and emptiness once, he thought, but maybe he’d just been running toward something that would make it make sense.

“You’re a guard,” Mark said. “You’re a protector.”

The morning sun snuck between a gap in the curtains, lighting the floor between them golden. 

“It’s a lot to take in,” Renjun said after the quiet stretched on.

“So you do magic,” Donghyuck said, “with spells or something?”

Mark shook his head. “It’s like...everything had energy, right? Everyone has an energy that’s specific to them, but not everybody can feel it. Most people aren’t even aware of it. And barely anyone can manipulate it -- control it.”

“And mages can?”

“Right. It’s like...it’s just like seeing something no one else can, but you’re not insane or anything, they’re just all...weaker.”

Renjun let out a breath that sounded like a scoff. Donghyuck silently agreed, although the insinuation that he was stronger than others pulsed comfortably under his skin. This could be an idea he grew fond of.

“But what about me?” Donghyuck asked. “Can I control it?”

“Yes, in a way,” Mark said after a moment. He was clearly hesitating, uncertain maybe of the way that Donghyuck would accept his explanation. “You can control your aura when it’s about...defense.”

“Defense?”

“Defending me, to be more exact.”

“Why?”

If Mark had been uncomfortable before, his discomfort had grown to new heights. Donghyuck hadn’t thought he would ever again see the depth of the blush that crept up Mark’s cheeks from his neck.

“Some people are made of the same sort of stuff. Their energies match -- complete each other. Ours...match.”

“So we’re soulmates.”

Mark was quick to continue now, his tongue stumbling over the words. “Yes, but, like, soulmates don’t have to be romantic. A mage and a guard don’t have to...be that.”

“But they can be?”

It was a dangerous question to ask in this room of all places, where Mark’s and Renjun’s lives became visually and physically inseparable, despite the fact that they rarely even touched one another. It was an imposition. 

“It’s a possibility,” Mark answered after a long moment of indecision.

A non-answer. Donghyuck deserved more than that after all they had been through, especially the events of the previous night that still sat heavy on top of the whole conversation, the weight waiting to be acknowledged.

“If I choose to believe any of that, it only explains what happened to us and Hendery-- Kunhang. What happened with--”

_ Jaemin. Dejun.  _

_ Renjun.  _

“Anyone who wants to hurt a mage has to go through their guard first,” Mark said, reluctant. 

Donghyuck blinked a few times as the realization flooded his mind. “The story you told us.”

Mark’s ears burned pink. “I wanted to see how much you knew. I could see your energy was strong, I just didn’t know...I didn’t want to make assumptions.”

That was fair, Donghyuck supposed, although he still wanted to protest Mark’s behavior the rest of the holiday at Jaemin’s. Not with Renjun here -- somehow, even with all of this revelation in the air, they still were keeping secrets.

It was less than twelve hours ago that Mark had held Donghyuck’s hands and whispered in his ear before the game, and Donghyuck’s chest had felt so full it would burst with the faintest touch. He wanted to go back to that part of the night, keep holding onto Mark’s hands, seek Renjun out in the crowd and say he was sorry. 

_ Sorry _ felt so useless now, such a small word in the grand scheme of things.

He was so tired.

Donghyuck rubbed his eyes, exhaustion clawing at his eyelids. 

“You should get some rest,” Mark said. “We all should.”

“It’s a lot, I know,” Renjun added. His voice made Donghyuck flinch.

Mark swallowed hard, an audible sound that unnerved Donghyuck -- he wasn’t used to Mark being nervous, and he wanted him to be sturdy now, to hold all of them together. 

“Do you want to just sleep here?” Mark asked.

Donghyuck shook his head, standing despite the protesting ache in all his limbs. “I should go back to my room. Kunhang--”

“He’s probably gone,” Mark said.

Donghyuck frowned. “Why would he leave?”

He probably should have been able to put it together himself, but he was too tired to form all the connections between the onslaught of information that had been heaped on him within the past few hours. 

“Donghyuck,” Renjun said quietly, “someone killed Dejun so they can get to Kunhang. He was in the way.”

Donghyuck walked back to his room in a daze, the impossibilities circling his head. 

Norton was supposed to be paradise -- his escape from his small town and smaller opportunities. It was his escape. But there were darker things working against him than just the haughty attitude of his pedigreed classmates.

He held his breath as he pushed open the door to his room.

His side remained as he left it -- clothes tossed over the foot of his bed, his homework in stacks on top of his desk. 

But Kunhang’s side of the room was stripped bare. The photos hung on his wall had vanished; his wardrobe stood empty.

Donghyuck stood in the center of their room. The morning sun cast his shadow against Kunhang’s blank wall, a mockery of his solitude.

He woke sometime in the night, the light long vanished from Norton’s grounds, leaving quiet but conquering the creeping shadows that stole into Donghyuck’s nearly dreamless sleep.

He might not have awoken at all, had it not been for the knock at his door.

Too late, he realized he’d fallen into bed with all his clothes still on, his hair unwashed and sticking to his forehead. Maybe if he didn’t feel so empty, he would have been embarrassed when he opened the door and saw Renjun standing there, but instead all he felt was relief.

He was too tired to consider avoiding him anymore. All he wanted was to lean into Renjun’s side and forget.

“Can you be sneaky?” Renjun whispered conspiratorially. 

Donghyuck raised his eyebrows. Renjun lifted the skateboard tucked under his arm in answer. 

“If we’re quiet, we can get past the gates,” Renjun said. “I can get that far.”

Donghyuck grabbed his jacket and shoes. He didn’t have to answer, just like Renjun didn’t really need to ask. 

Donghyuck would follow him anywhere.

  
  
  


Donghyuck raced after Renjun, his heart hammering as the sound of Renjun’s bright, musical laugh reached his ears. Running uphill left him breathless, and he leaned over when they stopped at the top, hands gripping his knees as he sucked in air.

When he looked up, Renjun was grinning down at him, the top of his light brown hair glowing like a halo under the streetlamp. “Think we’ll get in trouble?’

“Don’t worry, I’ll take the fall,” Donghyuck said seriously. 

This only sent Renjun into another fit of laughter, clutching Mark’s skateboard to his chest like a child would with a teddy bear.

The curve of his neck was perfectly shaped for Donghyuck’s hand to curl over. He wanted to press his fingers under Renjun’s chin and lift his face to the stars, to see the reflection of the moon in his shining eyes, and Donghyuck wanted to kiss him. 

Something about Renjun made Donghyuck feel like a boy. His laugh sounded like summer, like the raucous sound of a song played too loudly from a car stereo. It vibrated under Donghyuck’s skin and made him want to break things and put them all back together again. 

But he wasn’t his to kiss. Renjun didn’t belong to him and that ached, it ached -- Renjun belonged to stranger things Donghyuck couldn’t understand. 

They didn’t have a chance, did they?

Renjun dropped the skateboard onto the ground, rolling it back and forth with one foot on the end. The wheels on the old pavement rumbled like thunder in the quiet night.

“Have you done this before?” 

Donghyuck shook himself from his thoughts. He squinted down the hill in front of them, how the stretch of road dropped away into the unknown dark. “It’s been a while. I used to make the older guys in my neighborhood teach me tricks.”

With a little longer hair stuffed under a knit cap and some sneakers, Renjun would have been the spitting image of them. His slanted smile fit into a crowd of sharp chaos, smoky hazes. It struck Donghyuck again that he didn’t know Renjun outside of school and would probably never see him out of his uniform. 

Renjun popped one end of Mark’s board off the ground. “Maybe if we’d met before I could’ve taught you some.”

Donghyuck swallowed hard. “You can teach me now.”

It happened in a flash -- one blink and Renjun had already kicked off. He rode over the lip of the hill, picking up speed as he skated down the incline. Donghyuck watched him, holding his breath as Renjun flew, and as he fell. 

The wheel must have caught in some bump, hidden from their pitiful human eyes, and Renjun tumbled off the board, catching himself on his hands first before rolling to a stop.

“Fuck,” Donghyuck swore, racing down to him.

Renjun laid flat on his back on the pavement, his face turned up toward the sky. Donghyuck’s heart stuttered in his chest as he knelt beside him. He took him in from head to toe, instinctually checking for any limbs sticking out at awkward angles. Renjun stayed silent as Donghyuck pushed his sleeves up, rolled his slacks up to his knee, the handling of a slight ragdoll with the care of holding an infant.

Donghyuck stared down at him for a long moment, raking his eyes over the light pink scars covering Renjun’s knees. No fresh bruises had appeared, not a drop of blood spilled to mix in with gravel and dust of the road. 

Donghyuck swept his fingers over Renjun’s knee, wiping away a bit of tiny rock and dirt that stuck to his skin. He was still as perfect as before the fall.

Renjun looked worried when Donghyuck finally looked up at his face. It wasn’t an expression Donghyuck had seen on him before.

He reached up, touching Renjun’s jaw lightly. “You’re all in one piece.”

“Yeah,” Renjun said, voice low.

Donghyuck cracked a smile. “Perks of being dead?”

The anxiety melted off of Renjun’s face, replaced by an upward twitch of his lips. “Just add it to the pros and cons list.” 

Wind rushed off the surface of the lake and blew their hair back from their faces, so they sat under the tree and used its wide trunk to block out the forces of nature working against them. 

Here, by Renjun’s side, everything felt easier. In the dark, Donghyuck could say anything he felt.  _ Almost anything. _

“Mark doesn’t care,” Donghyuck said. He was at once surprised by the bitterness that crept through his tones, a shadow clinging to his words that could’ve been innocent had he not cared so much himself.

Renjun remained unmoved. “Of course he cares.”

Donghyuck didn’t know if he could explain to him, the boy who everyone felt so strongly about one way or the other, what it felt like to be ignored, or if he would want to explain this at all, to the same boy who he liked to make smile in the same way Mark did.

That was the complicated part, really. At the core of their relationship, Mark and Renjun were inseparable. Donghyuck didn’t want to split them up, he just wanted to be let in.

So he had to approach this carefully. “He doesn’t like hanging out alone with me. Sometimes he acts like he wishes he didn’t know me at all.”

Renjun sat back, leaning his head against the trunk of the tree as he considered Donghyuck’s words. The pause stretched between them and wrapped itself around Donghyuck’s throat, leaving him helpless except to wait and listen, two things he was often too impatient for.

“He’s scared,” Renjun murmured finally.

“Of me?”

“Of everything. He’s not going to figure it out, and he doesn’t think he deserves to be happy if he can’t.”

It hit Donghyuck coldly, the finality in Renjun’s words. 

He’d thought about it before, of course, what would happen when Mark had to leave and Renjun was left behind. Donghyuck would still be there of course, and Jeno, Chenle, Jisung, even Jaemin, but none of them had the power to bring Renjun back to life. 

None of them could do what Mark could, if he could manage it.

And he’d had his doubts about Mark, but he never thought Renjun had.

He wondered if Mark knew, but it was a silly thought, because of course he did. Mark knew everything. Everything but him.

“Why aren’t you scared?” Donghyuck asked, the strength in his voice fading.

Renjun’s eyes glinted in the darkness. “Who says I’m not?”

Donghyuck would only trust Mark to speak for Renjun, but even that was a wavering belief. He reached out, and slipped his fingers over Renjun’s cool skin, curling them over his wrist. “Don’t give up on him yet.”

“Never,” Renjun murmured. If Donghyuck could believe in one thing, it was this.

The weekend passed in a flurry of a poor sleep schedule and moments stolen with Renjun in his room, by the lake, just past the gates. Mark stayed away. 

Donghyuck never asked him to, but he didn’t know how to ask him to come back.

Monday morning, they all came back together again, huddled around their table in the dining hall. He shared a smile with Jisung who seemed far too awake and alert to be natural, and Chenle who seemed to be fighting his instinct to ask questions.

Only Jaemin was absent from the table, and Jeno sat tense at Donghyuck’s side. He wondered where Jaemin was, if he’d been doing alright since Kunhang had rushed him in the hall, but it didn’t last long.

Donghyuck felt the boy’s gaze heavy on the back of his neck, but didn't raise his head from where it drooped over his cereal bowl. Instead, he raised his spoon to his lips. 

Jaemin could come to him if he needed something, but Donghyuck wasn’t a servant to be fetched.

He thought Jaemin would leave when he realized Donghyuck wasn’t caving. He didn’t know how to interpret the twist in his stomach when he found his assumption wrong.

Jaemin touched Donghyuck’s shoulder briefly -- if Donghyuck weren’t already paying attention, he might not have felt it at all. 

Lifting his head, Donghyuck looked up at him. 

“I need your help,” Jaemin said.

Jaemin’s hair, usually so neatly combed and styled away from his face, hung over his forehead in sections droopy with oil. His breeding should have demanded straight posture, a head held high, but he avoided meeting Donghyuck’s eyes -- his own swollen and dull.

Being accused of murder must take a toll on someone, even someone with such a large superiority complex as Jaemin.

Although he may have hated to admit it, Donghyuck didn’t think Jaemin is an evil person. He felt a brief pang of sympathy over his overall disdain, and was just enough to smooth his expression into something more akin to concern.

“What do you need?” Donghyuck asked.

Jaemin’s gaze slid to the seat beside Donghyuck, where Jeno sat completely still, as if God had pressed pause on the remote that controlled him. Just as quickly as Jaemin’s attention had been pulled to him, the boy seemed to push it away.

Despite not looking like he was interested, Jeno’s head tilted toward them. He was listening.

“Just to talk,” Jaemin said. “I want to properly thank you for defending me.”

The lie stank. Donghyuck felt its stickiness like swamp air upsetting the still, if uneasy energy surrounding the table. 

Ever since he’d talked to Mark about their situation, he’d begun to notice more and more the energies that zipped or meandered through the air. Everyone had one, each as unique as a person’s own soul, but he’d been so blind to them before. 

Now, he couldn’t stop himself from getting distracted during class, focusing his attention instead on the lazy, winding energy that wafted off Jeno, or the relaxing darkness that ebbed from Jisung’s hands while he leafed through dusty library books. 

Jaemin’s energy was shuttered and elusive. Donghyuck could nearly see it, but there was something sharp about it that directed his attention away. Even now, as exhausted as he looked, his core was pushing at Donghyuck’s buttons, at once not wanting to be seen and prodding him toward an argument.

Nothing else about Jaemin screamed dangerous at the present moment, not with his hunched shoulders and messy uniform. He wasn’t even wearing his tie. One of his shoelaces was untied. If his parents saw him now, they’d surely be disappointed.

“Sure,” Donghyuck agreed, against his better judgement. “Let’s talk.”

He pushed his chair away from the table and stood, ready to lead Jaemin out of the dining hall.

“Where are you going?”

Jeno’s volume lifted a fraction higher above the background noise of the cafeteria, probably louder than he’d intended. 

“Maybe the courtyard?” 

“The chapel,” Jaemin said.

Norton Academy’s chapel was all dark wood and ancient art. Donghyuck hadn’t spent much time there. No one really did.

Jeno’s expression showed his unease. He pressed his lips together in a line firm enough to convince Donghyuck he was trying not to heave up his breakfast again.

Donghyuck clapped his hand to Jeno’s shoulder and squeezed, careful not to rattle him too much, just in case his stomach was weaker than he’d thought. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Mark, who had stayed noticeably silent throughout the whole exchange, nodded his approval. As if Donghyuck needed it.

Yet, Mark’s reaction seemed to satisfy Jeno, though he remained tense in his seat the whole time Donghyuck walked beside Jaemin out of the dining hall. A glance back told Donghyuck that they held not only his attention, but half the school’s.

Before the doors could swing shut behind them, his gaze drifted to the table he’d once sat at in the middle of the dining hall. It stood like a gruesome monument to the boys who’d once inhabited it. No one dared to sit there, or even steal a seat.

He could almost hear Dejun’s quiet chuckle warm against his ears, but it was just the sound of the doors falling closed.

  
  


The inside of the chapel was just as dark as Donghyuck remembered from his first time there.

It hadn’t been long since he’d shuffled into an evening service at the beginning of the school year, but the events of just the past week had made it seem like it had been years, rather than just a few months. While the world tilted on its axis outside, the chapel withstood the test of tragedy. He supposed that was the beauty of architecture that stood despite a war -- it showed that some things stayed the same, even as everything else changed.

Shuttered, the few windows let in little light, and the altar glowed with the low light. The pews were empty save for a few first year students huddled together in the front, their heads bowed toward their knees.

Jaemin led Donghyuck instead into the last pew, where the light and attention couldn’t reach them. In the shadows, Jaemin’s face looked grim, the dark bags under his eyes deepening.

Donghyuck sat beside him. Closed away from the busy chatter of Norton, now made rowdier by Dejun’s apparent murder and Kunhang’s absence, Jaemin’s breath fell stuttered and uneven. He rubbed his palms over his thighs and for a moment the only sound was the brush of them over his slacks.

“What do you want to talk about, Jaemin?” Donghyuck asked.

“Do you remember when you came to my house for the holiday?”

_ House  _ was an understatement. But how could Donghyuck forget? He nodded.

“That first night…” Jaemin murmured, “I said something to you.”

_ Do you remember? _

Donghyuck allowed his mind to drift back to Jaemin’s hollow voice, his pupils blown out wide. “You just said ‘again.’ Over and over.”

“Again,” Jaemin murmured, “the cycle.”

“Yeah. What does that mean?”

Jaemin glanced ahead of them toward the pulpit but averted his eyes within seconds. Instead he stared down at the back of the pew in front of them, a shiny donor nameplate hidden by Jaemin’s shadow.

Donghyuck wasn’t sure how long he could wait for Jaemin to make his mind up, but this seemed to be a moment that required gentle prodding, rather than his rough and tumble instinct to push Jaemin to get started already. “Hey...you can talk to me, you know?”

“I know,” Jaemin said, “I trust you.”

Donghyuck didn’t have time to be surprised.

“It’s been ten years since Renjun was murdered. The day that-- when Dejun--” Jaemin swallowed hard. “It was the anniversary. Ten years ago, exactly.”

The insinuation beat against Donghyuck’s temple with tiny wings. “You think they have something to do with each other?”

Jaemin nodded. “At least one thing. Donghyuck, when Renjun-- I was there.”

Donghyuck’s head spun with the rapid series of new information being flung at him. He’d never even heard Jaemin refer to Renjun by name, and now he thought he had something to do with his death? 

“Jaemin. I don’t mean to be rude, but. Ten years ago...you were only, what? Seven, eight?”

Jaemin’s heavy gaze fell on him. “I’m not saying I killed him myself.”

“What  _ are _ you saying?”

As much as Donghyuck wanted to extend Jaemin some patience, some gentle treatment, this was making less sense than before it started. 

Jaemin seemed to understand that he was going in a circle without Donghyuck voicing it. He took a deep breath and fisted his hands into tight balls on his knees before continuing, the line of his body tense with discomfort.

“I was five when I started sleepwalking. My mother didn’t know how to handle it herself and my father was always busy, so they started looking for nannies with more  _ specialized _ experience. My favorite came when I was seven and stayed with us for a year -- they fired her when I went missing, but that’s- I’ll start again. I started sleepwalking when I was young, but it wasn’t only when I was asleep.”

Back at Jaemin’s house, the boy had grabbed onto Donghyuck’s arms, his face blank and dreamlike -- if that dream was a nightmare. Jumbled pieces began slotting together in Donghyuck’s mind.

“I would say a lot of...strange things,” Jaemin continued, “my mother hated it. But my nanny didn’t mind. She tried to help me figure out my dreams when I felt better. It was nice to have someone who understood. But then I went missing, and they fired her.”

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck murmured.

Jaemin shot him a weary glance. “Well. She did leave me unattended to go meet a boyfriend. It just happened to be an unfortunate night to sneak away.”

“How unfortunate?”

Jaemin’s lips twisted into a grim smile that fell as soon as it formed. “That was the night I saw him killed. Nobody would have found his body if they hadn’t been looking for me.”

The respectful part of Donghyuck told him to stay quiet, but curiosity beat his politeness down. “Where?”

“Prophet Lake. The ice was just beginning to harden,” Jaemin said. “He was still floating when they found me.”

The thought of Renjun lying alone, cold, abandoned in the water, twisted Donghyuck’s stomach in knots. More surprisingly, his chest ached from the idea of Jaemin standing vigilantly on the shore, waiting for someone to save them both.

After all this time, he was still waiting for someone to take him away from the shore.

Donghyuck touched Jaemin’s arm, laying his hand over his wrist. “You think it was the same person who killed Dejun?”

Jaemin exhaled slowly and nodded. “It’s the same knife. I’ve seen it a hundred, a thousand times.”

Donghyuck squeezed Jaemin’s wrist. He hoped his touch was comforting, and despite his lack of knowledge about the inner workings of the English boy’s mind, he wanted to help him however he could. “Do you dream about it?”

Jaemin’s gaze returned to Donghyuck’s face, and held steady for the first time in many days. “I don’t know if they’re dreams. They always come true.”

“What, you’re psychic?” Donghyuck asked. A wry smile stole across his lips, but dropped as Jaemin just looked at him, unmoved by the humor of the question. 

Well. A ghost, two murders, mages...why not add a psychic to the mix?

Whatever skepticism Donghyuck had left couldn’t be permitted to participate in this conversation. 

“Can you see who hurt Dejun?” Donghyuck asked.  _ Hurt _ sounded better than  _ killed _ , although it felt the same dismal gray.

Jaemin shook his head. Under Donghyuck’s hand, his arm tensed. “I just know it was the same knife. The same night. The same--”

Donghyuck shifted closer to him, and took Jaemin’s hand in both of his. His fingers felt hot against the clammy coolness of Jaemin’s palm. The press of their skin together made Donghyuck’s fingertips tingled with heat that was quickly becoming familiar, and in the edges of his vision he could see his white-hot aura curling up Jaemin’s wrist.

He had been made to protect Mark, but he knew he would do whatever it took to protect his friends, too.

“I want to help,” Jaemin whispered, “I want to fix this. But I’ve never tried to look before. I never wanted to see.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“You’re the only one who believes me.”

“Renjun believes you.”

Jaemin dropped his gaze from Donghyuck’s face once more, staring resolutely at the back of the pew in front of them.

Donghyuck suppressed the urge to sigh and scold him. Jaemin’s sensitivity couldn’t hold up to facing someone he’d ignored the existence of for years and asking him for help. They wouldn’t get very far that way. 

Jeno and Mark weren’t an option either.

“How about Jisung? Chenle?” Donghyuck suggested instead. “We don’t have to figure it out alone.”

“We?”

Donghyuck smiled. It was possibly the first time he had offered Jaemin this kind of friendliness. He was relieved to see Jaemin smile back.

“With their expertise, and mine, we’ll have you seeing visions in no time.”

Jaemin’s shoulders shuddered with the potential of that promise. The shadows of the dim chapel crept over his expression and shrouded whatever he was really feeling. Still, the familiar cool distance slipped back into his voice as he asked, “And what are you an expert in?”

“Ah,” Donghyuck said as he let go of Jaemin’s hand, unable to hide his smile as his aura left Jaemin in a rush, leaving him shocked and cold. “I have a lot to catch you up on.”

Jaemin shivered again. He raised his hand to check his watch, an antique looking thing that rang of old money and class. “Let’s try to meet them now.”

“Now?” Donghyuck peered at the time. “We have class.”

Jaemin stood. “People are dead, Donghyuck. Is class that important?”

He wouldn’t have been able to argue even if Jaemin hadn’t slipped out of the pew and started from the chapel without waiting for a response.

As he stood to follow, Donghyuck caught sight of the nameplate on the back of the pew -- a family who had probably donated money to the school in return for this small piece of remembrance. He couldn’t look at it too long. It brought heat climbing up his cheeks, and the wear of the faded words, rubbed by gentle fingertips, made his eyes burn.

He didn’t want to lose Jaemin, so he slipped out of the aisle and hurried out of the chapel, his heart pounding in time with his footsteps.

_ For Renjun, who always brought light out of the dark.  _

_ Rest in peace.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)   
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	10. pt. x

Donghyuck suspected Jaemin to be headed toward the library, but when he caught up to him they were rounding the corner to the infirmary. 

“The boys are probably in the library,” Donghyuck said, but Jaemin waved him off.

Some of his former self had returned to his gaze, the confidence of a young man raised with the world at his feet in his limbs as he waved his hand, swatting Donghyuck’s words from the air.

With his other hand Jaemin pulled open the infirmary door. Donghyuck followed. Arguing would have only been a waste of breath.

On the list of strange events that Donghyuck had experienced since coming to Norton, his run-in with the man now in front of him had been low. But now that his eyes had been opened to another mystery of the world, he could see the amber glowing off his skin, and he realized they were made of the same strange parts.

“Ten,” Jaemin said. “I need a favor.”

The man, the doctor -- _Ten_ \-- turned in his swivel chair to face them. Although he wore a wary expression, his eyes were kind as they fell on the pair of them in the doorway. 

“Yes, Mr. Na?” Ten asked.

Ten moved a stack of files off his desk into a drawer, his aura skittering over the papers like loose glitter. 

Chancing a glance down at his own hands, Donghyuck wondered if his energy behaved the same way, if Mark and Renjun had been seeing white-hot flames dance over everything he touched for the last few months. 

How did it look when it spread over Mark’s hands as they held onto each other? As he grasped Renjun’s arm under the tree, did it burn him?

Donghyuck felt his ears burning, but it was more from the embarrassment of his own intrusive thoughts than his newfound ability. He stuffed those ideas into a mental drawer and slammed it shut, just as Ten did the same and stood.

“Spit it out,” Ten said.

Jaemin pursed his lips as he considered his words. It was the most Donghyuck had seen him think before speaking. Maybe he was turning over a kinder leaf.

“I need an excuse for four students,” Jaemin said finally. “For the day.”

“The whole day?”

Jaemin nodded. 

Even as he grumbled to himself, Ten turned to his computer and begun typing with far more force than it required. 

Donghyuck hoped his new education here at Norton would afford him the same ability to demand rather than request. But the number of classes he’d skipped so far that year made it doubtful.

He still had a lot of catching up to do to meet Jaemin Na where he stood as the king.

_A greasy king,_ Donghyuck thought. He should nudge him toward a hose if they caught any gardeners outside today. 

“Do I even want to know what this is for?” Ten asked as he typed. “Names?”

“Me, Donghyuck, Chenle, Jisung,” Jaemin said. He had crossed the room to sit on one of the chairs on the opposite side of Ten’s desk. He sunk into the hard cushion like it was the plushiest seat in the world. “Don’t worry. No children will be harmed.”

“I’ll try not to be too concerned,” Ten said. He continued typing without pause. His effort to keep his eyes on the screen and remain casual was commendable, but the lilt in his voice gave him away as he asked, “Have you been sleeping alright, Jaemin?”

Jaemin’s lips twisted grimly. “Mm. Just fine.”

“Do you have a moment to speak privately?”

If Donghyuck had thought he was invisible from Ten’s lack of acknowledgment, he was proven wrong. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the door. “I can go.”

“No,” Jaemin said. “What is it?”

Ten squinted at him but didn’t press further. “You haven’t been down to take your sleeping pills in a while.”

Donghyuck stared at the back of Jaemin’s dark head. He hadn’t realized their truce extended deeply into their personal lives. What would he have to give up to make it even?

Jaemin didn’t react, at least not outwardly. “I’m sure you’ve found some use for them.”

Whatever Jaemin was insinuating lit Ten’s face red, the shame beaming over his cheeks like a spotlight.

Ten cleared his throat. “You’re all sorted. I sent a note out to your instructors that you’ve all mysteriously come down with something. So, if anyone asks, I’ve lectured you all on the danger of sharing drinks.”

“What about kissing?”

Was that a joke? Did Jaemin make jokes?

Ten huffed out a breath. “Oh, be quiet, please. I don’t want to hear about it, Mr. Na.”

Jaemin rose from his seat and turned back toward Donghyuck. Before his eyes, the exhaustion flooded Jaemin’s body again. In his blazer pockets, his hands seemed to shake. Despite his apparent extension of trust to Donghyuck, he had begun avoiding his eyes again.

“Thank you,” Donghyuck said to Ten before they left. 

He didn’t want to be left behind again, but Ten’s voice gave him pause.

“Mr. Lee,” the physician said, “please come back and see me again, when you have time.”

Donghyuck held his breath. He looked over his shoulder, watching the glimmer of the dark amber haze around Ten’s hands where they lay palm down on the desk.

Glancing up, Ten’s smile told him he’d been caught.

Donghyuck swallowed dryly. “Is something the matter?”

“It’s important that you understand the full situation.”

About Jaemin? Did they seem that close?

“I heard you’ve recently stumbled across a new skill,” Ten continued gently, “I’d be happy to help you learn how to use it.”

The strength of Ten’s aura urged Donghyuck to agree without hesitation. But as little as he knew about whatever they both were, he couldn’t rush into situations like this. Mark had mentioned this man before, and Jaemin seemed to trust him, but people like him had been killed at this school, twice now, and the only person Donghyuck wanted to trust was himself.

“I’ll let you know if I need help with anything,” Donghyuck said, side-stepping the subject. He smiled as cheerily as he could manage before hurrying out the door. He wasn’t sure yet if his agreement had been a lie. 

Their little, not-so-secret corner of the library had been set up as if Jisung and Chenle had known they would come to them all along. It would be easier to believe they were the ones with visions, not Jaemin.

Instead of the typical sprawl that would be characteristic of their occult research sessions, only one black binder sat between them on the table, its contents at least a few inches thick.

As Jaemin and Donghyuck rounded the corner, Chenle pulled a tealight candle from his bag and placed it on the opposite side of the table, between the two empty chairs meant for them.

“I don’t think you can light candles in a library,” Donghyuck said as he pulled out his chair.

“We’ve already had that argument,” Jisung sighed, “it’s a lost cause.”

Chenle didn’t even try not to look smug. “I’ve read about meditation. What we need is a relaxing environment.”

“A burning building is relaxing to you?”

“It’s not like this is Alexandria,” Chenle said with a roll of his eyes.

Jisung looked like he was prepared to choke his best friend for that comment, but he was still trying to exude a mature demeanor in the face of the whole situation.

“Why are we meditating, anyway?” Donghyuck asked before the moment had the chance to dissolve into library-quiet chaos.

“Aren’t we helping Jaemin have another vision?” Chenle asked.

Jaemin blinked at him, unable to form an immediate response. “What…” he managed finally, “how do you know about that?”

Chenle patted the black binder. “It’s all in the notes.”

Jaemin made a sound close to what Donghyuck had imagined in his all daydreams about strangling him. But Donghyuck was more interested than upset.

“What notes?” He asked, sitting forward. He reached out to open the binder but Chenle swatted his hand away.

Jisung shot his cryptid-hunting partner another look. “It wasn’t actually in the notes. We hadn’t come to a conclusion yet about Jaemin, we just followed you to the chapel and eaves dropped.”

“Jisung,” Chenle huffed, “it’s so unethical to admit that.”

“It was probably more unethical to _do_ it,” Donghyuck pointed out. “There wasn’t anyone in the chapel, though?”

Jisung smiled. It was a small tell, but it was enough to morph his whole expression into something far more devilish than he usually seemed. Donghyuck hadn’t ever been certain that Jisung could destroy the world and get away with it, but he was assured now that Jisung would never be caught unless he wanted to be.

“We have our ways,” Jisung said simply.

“Of course,” Donghyuck said. “But about Jaemin, then—“

“I can speak for myself, thank you,” Jaemin interjected. “What conclusions had you come to?”

“Ah,” Chenle sighed, “it’s kind of embarrassing now… it was between you and Renjun, who the vampire was…kind of disappointing that it was neither of you.”

“I’m sure you’ll find one someday,” Donghyuck said.

Chenle nodded, serious. “I have a few leads.”

“Back to me?” Well, no one could have argued that Jaemin didn’t have their priorities straight.

“Right,” Chenle said, before launching into his explanation of the plan he and Jisung had devised over the past half hour.

Jaemin’s episodes occurred most often when he was relaxed, drifting off to sleep. More violent visions had been exceptions to this rule, like the one he’d had while hurrying to find Jeno during the rugby game.

Helping him relax seemed like a good idea to Donghyuck, as it obviously had to Chenle and Jisung, but Jaemin hadn’t ever intentionally tried to see things before. If he was going to go down this path, he needed to push himself past accidental dreams and the visions which had left him traumatized.

Although, the shock was more than likely a result of finding his classmate’s corpse than any dream he’d had.

Donghyuck wasn’t the mastermind of the plan, however, and felt just as out of his element as Jaemin seemed. So he went along with it, watching Jaemin watch the candle flame until the wick had burned down to nothing, listening to Chenle’s intermittent ‘hmm’s and the scratch of Jisung’s pen over his notebook.

As the flame went out, Jaemin pushed his chair back. His lips pressed together in a firm line, his eyes stormy. He stood without a word and walked around the corner, disappearing behind the shelves.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Chenle mused. “Should we try white noise maybe?”

“If the exhaustion isn’t enough to make him sleep, I don’t think normal relaxation methods are going to help,” Donghyuck replied. He sighed and stood as well.

“Are you going after him?” Jisung asked.

Donghyuck shrugged. “I guess so. One of us should.”

“I can,” Jisung offered.

Donghyuck had seen the way Jisung and Jaemin interacted – the comforting familiarity of two boys as close as brothers, how they teased and pushed at each other but were serious and gentle in quiet moments, their heads tilted together in conspiracy over books.

Maybe Jisung would have been a good choice for comforting Jaemin, but what he needed wasn’t comfort. He needed someone to push him off the ledge he was teetering on. Jaemin needed to fall.

He’d trusted Donghyuck to be the one behind him.

So, Donghyuck shook his head. “I’ll go.”

Jaemin was sitting between the shelves not far away when Donghyuck found him. His dark hair fell away from his face, his head tilted back against the books behind him, and he clasped his hands tightly together on top of his knees. Staring up at the ceiling, Jaemin’s eyes were pink rimmed and damp, like he’d been crying.

Donghyuck sat across from him. The toes of their shoes touched, the glossy shine of the expensive material that were uniform mandatory reflected the light from the windows that shone through the gaps between books.

“I can’t do it,” Jaemin said. His voice trembled. He swallowed hard, the muscles in his jaw working as he fought back the emotions that threatened to betray his hard exterior.

Donghyuck had already seen past Jaemin’s front. It wouldn’t help them accomplish anything. “Let’s try something else.”

“What?”

“You’re trying too hard to trick yourself into forgetting what’s happening. You need to focus on it instead. How did you feel when you were walking into the woods?”

Jaemin’s gaze shot to him, surprise written all over the part of his lips and rapid fluttering of his lashes as he sniffled back his remaining tears. “I don’t- I don’t know. I wasn’t conscious.”

“You were conscious enough to walk off the pitch unseen and wander into the woods miles from here,” Donghyuck pointed out. “But, fine. Let’s say you don’t remember what happens while you’re…seeing things. How did you feel before?”

“Lightheaded. I could hear…voices,” Jaemin answered after a moment. His cheeks flushed as he admitted it, as if Donghyuck could judge him at this point. “I got tunnel vision and then…and then I don’t remember.”

“What about other times?”

“About the same.”

“Do you ever do it on purpose?”

Jaemin shook his head, expression grim.

“That’s what I thought,” Donghyuck murmured. “But, I think it has to do with energy, the same kind of…”

He trailed off, unsure. Did Jaemin even know the rest of the story? Could he see Donghyuck’s aura? Was his own spirit locked away out of sight on purpose, or did he have no idea of its existence at all?

If they could go to Mark, this would be so much easier.

Donghyuck shook the thought away as quickly as it creeped in. Mark took up all the energy in the room – whatever Jaemin had to tap into had to be on his own effort, without Mark.

On the other hand, Donghyuck barely knew how to control his own aura. Maybe it was fate that his own unskilled ability could be just weak enough to nudge Jaemin along without overtaking him entirely.

“We should go somewhere quieter,” Donghyuck decided.

Donghyuck’s room was, as he had suggested, as quiet as a tomb.

As cold, too, and bleak.

Jaemin bit his tongue rather than ask why Donghyuck hardly had any decorations, save a postcard from Prague taped onto the wall beside his bed. It seemed like any evidence of life had been scrubbed from the room when Hendery left.

Jaemin couldn’t look at the opposite side of the room too long before the guilt crept back into the forefront of his mind, so he avoided doing so entirely.

“How do you study best?” Donghyuck asked, locking the door behind them.

With Jeno, outside under the sun, listening to the birds chirp and Jeno hum as if they were singing the same song.

“Listening to music,” Jaemin said. “With the lights on, and a cup of tea. Why?”

“’Cause we should copy how you focus best. I don’t think I have any tea, though.”

Jaemin’s room was just down the hall, but the idea of facing Jeno and the odd way he’d been looking at him made his stomach roll. “It’s fine.”

“Great,” Donghyuck said, clapping his hands together. He stood tall, poised to direct Jaemin in this rehearsal of a play he didn’t want to perform in. If he really didn’t have any ideas, his face didn’t betray him. “Let’s get started.”

If there was one thing Jaemin could believe in that day, it was the confidence of a desperate man.

Mark hadn’t slept in two days.

His rationale had fled the moment he heard his cousin’s scream, the echo of so many years ago. He wondered what it might be like, to always be this scatterbrained and hurried, but more than that he hated himself for not feeling this rush for the past four years.

He knew that he was running out of time, and still he wasted precious hours chasing after a boy who was fated to find him anyway.

Leaning back in his seat, Mark stretched until he felt his spine crack, and rubbed a hand over his neck to work out the knots at the base of his skull.

He could probably have written a dissertation on resurrection spells. Yet, he still knew nothing of use.

“You should eat something.”

Mark startled, turning his head to find Renjun standing beside him. “I’m not hungry.”

Renjun didn’t have to voice his dissatisfaction – it radiated around the room.

“I’ll eat later-- soon,” Mark amended. “I’m almost done.”

“You’re more important than this stuff,” Renjun said. “I’ll survive.”

They hadn’t discussed it much over the past year. It was a conversation that left them both feeling moody. Mark just didn’t want to let him down, enough people had done that.

But—no, it wasn’t just that, was it?

It was the way Mark wanted to reach out between this distance and hold Renjun in his arms, to feel his heartbeat under his hand, to hear his laughter for the rest of his life.

Mark wanted to take Renjun away from here. He didn’t want to forget him. He didn’t want to have to ignore the glimpse of a boy with hair an inch too long and scuffed shoes in the corner of his vision whenever he visited Norton for alumni events.

Mark couldn’t grow old without Renjun. He couldn’t face a life without him.

The clock was ticking.

Renjun was just a few inches away. Mark could have reached out to him, but he didn’t. He didn’t deserve to.

Instead, Renjun placed his hand over his, pressing his fingers into the spaces between Mark’s. His hand was so cold.

Mark closed his eyes and tried to believe he could make them warm again.

Jeno hauled himself up the stairs without looking up from his phone. He hadn’t seen Jaemin or Donghyuck since breakfast the morning before and worry had sunk so deep in his chest it had become a permanent part of him. 

Mark hadn’t mentioned what was going on, if he knew. But he seemed just as preoccupied, hiding away in the library for even longer hours than before.

Jisung and Chenle had been sneaking off. That wasn’t new, but they hadn’t even tried to rope Jeno into a scheme about hunting ghosts. He supposed none of them needed to anymore, not when-- He didn’t want to think about him.

In Mr. Nakamoto’s history class, Jeno had even risked checking his texts, just in case one of them had messaged him, but he’d been caught -- his phone slipped into Mr. Nakamoto’s desk drawer until the end of the day.

Now that he’d collected it, he saw that there still weren’t any texts from them, just a few from Lucas in the rugby team’s groupchat that made his stomach roll. He wasn’t sure he could open those. He hadn’t been at the scene of the crime, but the knife under his mattress made him feel like it.

It was clear to anyone who saw Jaemin that he hadn’t been sleeping much, but Jeno had been suffering a similar fate. There was no way he could sleep on that bed. He could barely stomach to sit on it.

Instead, he’d stayed up late last night pretending to study until the halls quieted. Then, he snuck down to the common area and slept on the couch. It was a strategy born partly from guilt and partly from his assumption that he’d wake up if Jaemin came back to the dorm -- there’d be no way he could miss him if Jaemin was only coming back late and leaving early before Jeno woke up.

But Jaemin never came, and Jeno’s sleep was still haunted.

Then again, what was the difference between nightmares and reality anymore?

His and Jaemin’s room was at the end of the hall. Everyone seemed to be out for the evening, at club events or early dinner, and the whole building was quiet. As he reached the top of the steps, however, he heard the distinct click of a lock. He didn’t have time to look up from his empty notifications before being shoulder checked out of the way. 

“What the-- Yangyang?”

Another thrum of guilt cut through Jeno’s body. 

His classmate usually wore such a wide grin. He was one of the friendliest people Jeno had ever met, not just at Norton, and the ease with which he carried himself through life had inspired Jeno since last year, when Jeno had transferred in with his pockets suddenly full of cash and his life overflowing with privileged opportunity.

Now, Yangyang’s shoulders hunched forward. He kept his head down. Jeno had no doubt about the reason why he looked so pained. 

“Hey,” Jeno said. His mouth felt too dry to manage anything else.

“I-- I was just seeing if Hendery was back yet,” Yangyang stammered. He glanced down at the Rolex on his wrist, like he had somewhere to be.

Jeno cast a glance toward Donghyuck’s room, which he’d shared with Hendery until just a few days ago. He’d heard from Mark that Hendery was probably never coming back here. Why hadn’t anyone told Yangyang? He was their friend.

He remembered, then, passing by Donghyuck’s door earlier in the year on his way to his own room. All he could hear was Yangyang’s bright laughter, muffled music, and the gentle tone of Xiaojun nagging. 

Jeno’s throat felt tight. He couldn’t look at his classmate anymore. “Right. I’ll let you know if I see him. Um. Maybe Lucas is around?”

Yangyang didn’t answer and Jeno didn’t watch him go, but he heard his footsteps carry down the stairs, and couldn’t help but listen until they faded away.

As Jeno entered his room, he saw that it remained exactly as he had left it. He had hoped that Jaemin would be back by now, his phone dead as usual, although if that meant a repeat of the nights Jeno had gone to pick him up in the middle of nowhere he was glad this wasn’t the case.

He had been wondering lately what those nights meant in the new context of the murder. His assumption that Jaemin had been going out to meet hookups seemed silly now, but he still couldn’t swallow whatever darker explanation was true.

His bag was heavy with homework, but studying seemed silly. Everything seemed silly, and pointless.

His habits told him to collapse into his bed and take a nap, but the bed now looked like a monster with a headboard.

Instead, Jeno found himself sitting on the edge of Jaemin’s mattress. 

It was usually made up so neatly, each corner of his sheets tucked in just the right places with finesse that shouldn’t have been a capability of a boy who had grown up as wealthy as Jaemin, a boy who had had everything done for him his whole life.

A new emotion surged through Jeno, one that he wasn’t familiar with. It felt a lot like watching an opposing team score a try.

He didn’t think he had really ever been angry before, especially not at a friend. _Especially_ not at _Jaemin._ He felt like running until he couldn’t breathe, like swinging a fist at someone much bigger than him.

Jeno groaned and fell onto his side, hugging Jaemin’s pillow against his chest. He pressed his face into the silk pillowcase, inhaling the scent of Jaemin’s earthy cologne mixed sweat. Curling his fingers into the fluffed corners, Jeno focused on his breathing, on centering himself on something more productive than anger at someone he couldn’t hold a grudge against, even if he wanted to.

He did want to. He wanted to shout at him, to demand an answer. He wanted to be honest and tell Jaemin he wasn’t sure if Jaemin was a killer or not because he knew it would hurt his feelings and Jeno didn’t want to hurt alone anymore.

But he wouldn’t -- he couldn’t, really. Only partly because he didn’t want to be honest with himself.

When it finally happened, Jaemin was lying on his side on Donghyuck’s bed, threading his fingers through the holes in his crotched blanket. It smelled like grass and sun, with the faint scent of a floral perfume.

When Jaemin closed his eyes, he could see himself and Jeno last summer on his lawn, passing the sweet wine from the cellar between them. It was two weeks of a giddy haze of warm fingers brushing over his and smiling so hard it hurt his cheeks punctuated by waking up halfway back to Norton in the middle of the night.

It was the first time he’d called Jeno to pick him up and the next day Jeno went home, frustration knitting his brows together. It was the first time Jaemin realized he never wanted to watch Jeno walk away, but it wouldn’t be the last. It was just the beginning.

If he didn’t want it to end, he had to try harder.

The room was hot and Jaemin felt a tingling all over his skin when he shifted on the bed. It was strange, yet safe, and when he thought hard about reaching into the dark place in his mind, he felt it reaching back.

His memories shifted behind his eyelids, warping until he was looking down at his own hands – but they weren’t his hands. Jaemin would never bite his nails so far down. The edges of the fingers were red and raw. On the right wrist, a gaudy gold Rolex weighed the wearer’s hands down.

The room was dark and grainy. Jaemin couldn’t breathe, the air too thick to enter his lungs. It smelled metallic, and stung his eyes like smoke.

Someone stood in front of a window, their back to him. When they spoke, the smooth slide of their voice tickled Jaemin’s ears. He knew that voice, but with his head swimming he couldn’t find the name that sat heavy on the tip of his tongue.

“We both should have seen what you were capable of,” the person in front of the window said. They paused and sighed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”

The body that Jaemin inhabited trembled. Their eyes blurred until he couldn’t see the room at all, just the lights through the surface of the water and he was sinking, the darkness closing around him.

Where was he?

Who was he?

In all the times Jaemin relived the moment he watched Renjun die, he’d never imagined that Renjun hadn’t been yet dead when he’d hit the water.

Jaemin pressed his hand against the wounds in his chest, but there were too many to staunch the flow of blood. Instead, he kicked hard, propelling his body up to the lights. His body screamed for him to stop and let the water take him.

Breaking the surface, taking one gulp of icy winter air off the surface of the lake, Jaemin’s vision cleared and he found himself in the chair once more.

He couldn’t shake the wet feeling, the chills that ran down his spine as the man in front of the window turned to face him.

Jaemin studied the sympathetic twist of the man’s lips with a removed distance. The pieces were all in a pile in front of him, but he couldn’t sort out which were the edges or the middle. All the colors blurred into one.

The man placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright. If you get the knife back, we can set this right. You can set it right. You can give the justice he deserves and it’ll all be forgiven.”

A glint of golden light swept through his vision, cutting the room in half, then vanished, and Jaemin was back in Donghyuck’s bed.

Chest heaving, Jaemin sat up and looked madly around the room, searching for the hands, for the knife.

“Jaemin, Jaemin—” Firm hands grasped his shoulders and squeezed. His mind centered around the contact, and Donghyuck’s face came into focus in front of him.

Jaemin breathed in and exhaled again – once, twice, three times – and raised his hands to Donghyuck’s chest to push him back.

“A little space, please?” He huffed.

Donghyuck rolled his eyes, sitting back on the floor, his legs folded under him. Apparently even when Jaemin had been out, however long it had been, Donghyuck hadn’t dared move any closer to the empty side of the room. It remained untouched.

“What did you see?” Donghyuck prompted him.

He couldn’t give him even a second to catch his breath, could he?

What had he seen? Jaemin never tried to analyze his visions, chalking them up to insanity and nightmares. He ran his tongue over the inside of his cheeks, where he’d bitten down on his own flesh, feeling the raised, raw bumps.

The first realization was warm. “It wasn’t me.”

Donghyuck nodded. The way he rubbed the bottom hem of his trousers between his fingers gave away his impatience despite the sympathetic shine in his eyes.

The second realization was much colder. Jaemin curled his hands into fists. “I know who did it.”

Abruptly, Donghyuck stood, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Jaemin, seriously? Fuck, let’s go then, we have to tell someone.”

Jaemin was slower to react, as one more piece clicked into place. Suddenly, it was much harder to breathe, as if the thick smoke of the room he’d just visited had somehow appeared before him, but he knew that it was just fear that choked him now.

He could only hear snatches of what Donghyuck shouted after him as he wrenched the door open, tearing down the hall.

Jaemin barely registered Jeno curled up on top of his bed before the other boy shot up, eyes wide.

“Jaemin—” Jeno breathed. “What’s going on?”

Jaemin’s heart pounded wildly as he slid his fingers under the edge of Jeno’s mattress. He could hear his blood pulsing through his body, his skin set alight.

Donghyuck’s racing steps slid to a halt as he entered the room seconds behind Jaemin.

Their voices mixed together – Jaemin couldn’t make out one from the other.

He lifted the side of Jeno’s mattress until they could all see the top of his box spring, the empty space and rusty brown stains. The knife was gone.

Donghyuck and Jeno both fell silent. The sound of Jaemin’s breathing alone filled the room.

Finally, Donghyuck whispered, “Where did you put it?”

Jaemin could spare them the confusion. “It’s gone.”

Jeno made a quiet noise. He sounded like a small animal, suddenly wounded. “What?”

“It’s gone,” Jaemin repeated. “He took it.”

“You saw it— you saw who,” Donghyuck pressed, “who? Jaemin, who did you see?”

Jaemin dropped the mattress again, his thoughts swirling around his head. He felt dizzy, the rush of adrenaline leaving his body in fits. “Yangyang. Yangyang killed him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (wayv babies i'm so sorry ily)
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)   
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	11. pt. xi

Twenty-six years before Donghyuck arrived at Norton Academy, Renjun was born.

He never considered himself extraordinary, but never felt insecure either. Instead, Renjun was content being the one who cheered for others, came in second, and turned his music up so loud his parents threatened to take away all his CDs. He was like most teenagers.

His family wasn’t necessarily wealthy, but his grandparents had connections. He enrolled at Norton by chance, pure luck – that’s what he thought until he met Sicheng.

The earth may have revolved around the sun, but the sun shone for Sicheng alone.

Renjun had never been a moth before, so it was a good thing Sicheng wasn’t much of a flame. Somehow, despite Sicheng’s kind exuberance and the popularity that came with it, he took Renjun into his life as an equal. It was a perfect fit. Renjun had never been so happy.

And then, just as he thought everything had fallen into place, the light blinked out.

Renjun’s short life went like this: a chain of events burning brighter and brighter until the universe decided it had to be stamped out, lest it explode.

Renjun never thought of himself as being particularly important, especially not important enough to be a threat, but maybe Renjun never knew much at all.

When Mark found him, things changed again. There was suddenly a reason for the tragic ending to Renjun’s short life. Mark taught him about the parts of himself he’d never understood, the fierce protective energy that clung to his easy smile, the way the world ebbed and flowed around him, as if Renjun could control it all if he reached out far enough. Mark understood the deepest parts of Renjun’s existence, and in return, Renjun tried to understand him.

If he had been made for Sicheng in life, Renjun’s death was shaped around the things Mark couldn’t control. So they completed each other, even if they weren’t meant to, and Renjun tried not to feel pushed out by Donghyuck’s sudden appearance filling in those gaps.

Despite the things they all felt, whatever they said or pointedly didn’t say, Renjun thought they all understood each other, at least. Even the other boys were meant to be there, at that very moment, for reasons the universe hadn’t revealed to them yet. He could trust that. He could trust them.

But Renjun Huang still had a secret.

He stole around the corner of the hall that led to faculty housing. This was a spot on Norton’s campus he tried to avoid. It wasn’t difficult since he usually stuck close to Mark and the other boys, and there was no reason for them to come to this part of the school – it was locked, after all, and even the ghoul investigators’ intense curiosity could be cut short by the inconvenience of lock picking.

Communicating with Sicheng was out of the question. Even if Sicheng’s grasp on energy had still been strong enough to see him, it would have surely sent him into a spiral that would drain the last of Ten’s weak glittering aura.

Renjun had good reasons to stay away from his past, to glance away from the photos of his classmates still hanging on the walls, alongside trophies and donation plaques. His own willpower to avoid these reminders of his former life seemed to have leaked out to others who walked the halls. No one noticed him. Those who did, would never recognize him. It had taken Chenle and Jisung long enough to find that newspaper.

Ghost stories spread so easily. His name should’ve been on the tongues of every first-year, whispered as they rounded dark, unfamiliar corners. There was no way to control a story like that, a tale of the dead boy who once was in their shoes.

Not unless you were the one who created the story in the first place.

The door was locked, but locks can’t keep out the dead.

Renjun found himself in a room identical to all the others in this hall, void of any sign of life besides the neatly made bed and cluttered desk. There was a stack of papers half graded on the edge of the desk, and an uncapped pen sitting beside them.

He turned slowly, taking in the room, feeling out the energy inside the space. It was old and familiar. Images raced through his mind as if he were flipping through an old family photo album. His own memories, but dimmer, resentful. Bitterness bubbled under his tongue. There was something hateful held in this space, even more unnerving than the energy of that knife had been.

Renjun chewed on the inside of his cheek as he tried to focus, centering himself physically in some of the ways Mark had instructed. He dug his nails into his palm, focusing on what it would feel like if he were alive, considering the draw of blood to the surface of his cold skin.

_There,_ he thought, as the room came into a clearer perspective. He brushed aside the evil that lurked in the corners of his vision. It wouldn’t help him find what he was looking for.

Instead, he stepped across the room to the closet. The doorknob felt warm, buzzing with hidden energy. _There._

The closet was small. There was hardly any space between the door and the back wall, but luckily Renjun was still sixteen and lean.

He knelt down, pushing aside the clothes that hung in his vision. Rather than dusty, everything was clean and the fresh scent of laundry detergent wafted up from the corner where the supplies were stored.

_Focus._ The closet was neatly kept, so the stack of shoeboxes on the top shelf was easy to find. Renjun stretched to reach them, only just able to pull them down without knocking them over completely. A quick rifle through their contents didn’t turn up anything noteworthy, just some old papers and bills, a photo or two from university. _Useless._

After replacing the boxes, Renjun stood, helpless, and tried to think. There was still no sign of the room’s occupant coming back, so that was good, but it was only a matter of time. He could feel the death in the room, and it wasn’t on account of his own presence. He had to find what he was looking for and get out. Then, he could really consider what he wanted to do.

It was his first instinct to kneel, so he squatted down again, closing his eyes. After a few years of fitting in with the boys, it was hard to reach our again to his other senses, the ones that set him apart from a living, breathing body. Still, he had to use his mind.

He knew there was proof here, but there was no way for anyone else to find it. He had to be the one to set things in motion, before anyone else got hurt.

Where would you hide something without stashing it in a box or a bag? Did you keep it on your person or did you put it somewhere no one would ever look?

Renjun ran his fingers along the groove where the wall and floor met. Anyone with this much to hide had to be more careful.

A few minutes later, Renjun slipped out of the faculty housing, his fingers curled tight around his prize. Locks can’t stop the dead, and neither can a few loose floorboards.

Donghyuck and Jeno stood in shock opposite Jaemin. He’d just announced that Dejun’s murderer was their classmate, Yangyang, who happened to be one of Dejun’s best friends. He was also the fourth member of their history project. It was a lot to take in.

“Don’t you get it?” Jaemin rambled. “Don’t you see what’s happening?”

Donghyuck pressed his palms to his eyes, hoping the pressure would be enough to ground him. He trusted Jaemin. He did. But his confidence in Jaemin’s understanding of his sight was wavering.

Because…Yangyang? Really? He’d been a stuttering, absent boy for weeks. Before then, he was a strong friend. Whatever he was dealing with, Donghyuck didn’t think he was capable of murder. But, someone had to be, didn't they?

“Take a breath, Jaemin,” Jeno said, his voice soft and gentle in a way that Donghyuck wished he could manage himself. “Why don’t you sit down? Let’s all sit down, and you can tell us.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Jaemin said. He sat regardless. Now that the knife was gone, Jeno’s bed was just a bed.

“Let’s start at the beginning. Why were you looking for the…?” Jeno trailed off, his voice wavering.

Donghyuck closed the door. This wasn’t a conversation that needed to be overheard.

“I was helping Jaemin meditate, so he could do his…thing, and figure out what happened.”

“His thing?” Jeno asked.

Donghyuck grimaced. Jaemin’s eyes were suddenly glued to the floor, his body frozen still.

“Ah, um,” Donghyuck said, “um, well, the thing—with the…seeing things?”

For a moment, Donghyuck hoped Yangyang would run back in with the knife and stab him. Then, at least, the silence would be broken.

“I have visions,” Jaemin said. His voice was so quiet Donghyuck could hardly hear him. He sounded defeated.

Jeno stared at him. The seconds dragged on. Donghyuck prepared himself to interject and move the conversation on, but Jeno shook his head and sat down on Jaemin’s bed.

Jeno sighed. “Yeah, why not?”

“I should’ve told you.”

Jeno shrugged his shoulders. The movement was too stiff to be casual.

Jaemin’s eyes fell to the floor again.

“Jaemin,” Donghyuck said carefully, “about Yangyang…can you tell us what you saw?”

Jaemin took a deep breath. He seemed to be settling his mind, like he and Donghyuck had learned together over their time spent together. “Someone talking about ‘setting things right.’ They said they needed to get the knife back – and now it’s gone.”

“Okay,” Donghyuck said, slowly, “and how do you know it’s Yangyang?”

Jaemin laid his fingers over the outside of his own wrist, rubbing the face of his watch. “It’s that hideous Rolex. I’ve seen it before. Only new money would wear something so…gaudy.”

Jeno didn’t react, which was enough response.

Donghyuck’s trust in Jaemin was a recent development, but he believed him. Although the image of sweet Yangyang luring one of his best friends out to the woods and stabbing him didn’t make sense, people could always surprise you. If he’d learned one thing in his time at Norton, it was that life was shocking and twisted.

But possibly worth it.

“They’re trying to set me up,” Jaemin grumbled. “That’s why they put the- the knife in my hand – my fingerprints are all over it now.”

Donghyuck glanced sideways at Jeno, who had leaned over his knees and was looking queasy. “What about his?”

Jaemin shook his head. “Jeno only touched it with his jersey and a towel.”

“Okay,” Donghyuck said. “Alright. So. The theory is that Yangyang killed Dejun, set you up, and now took the knife with your fingerprints.”

Jaemin nodded.

“Well,” Donghyuck said, “we know what we have to do.”

Jeno’s face paled. “Do we? We shouldn’t…you aren’t going to hurt him, are you?”

“How would we hurt him?” Donghyuck sighed. Even as the words passed his lips, he realized there were many ways he could hurt Yangyang now – he already had a taste of his strength when he pushed Yangyang out of the bathroom.

The bathroom… When Dejun died, Kunhang felt the pain like it was his own death. At the same time, Yangyang was in the bathroom down the hall. How could Yangyang have been in two places at once?

“Maybe we should tell someone,” Jeno said, “like a teacher.”

Donghyuck shook his head. “We don’t have any proof of what happened out there, and Jaemin’s fingerprints on the murder weapon will be the only evidence.”

Jeno looked unconvinced. His expression shifted from sick to concerned. Donghyuck hadn’t yet reckoned with his own potential involvement in the whole thing, but Jeno seemed conflicted over the matter of his guilt.

“If we don’t get it back, Jaemin will be in huge trouble,” Donghyuck murmured.

He and Jaemin both looked at each other. None of them wanted to voice the doubt in the room, but it hung in the air. What if Jaemin had killed Dejun, after all?

Donghyuck looked away and brushed the question from his mind. This was majorly fucked up. But these boys were all he had – including Jaemin. Faith would have to be enough.

Chenle Zhong had a secret, too, but this was one he shared.

Before arriving at Norton Academy, Chenle had never been understood.

Academics were a simple game that he played alone, and there wasn’t much thrill in that, so he finished his work quickly, never doing more work than he had to, and sought out something different for his mind to turn around.

Of the three most important days in Chenle’s life, meeting Jisung was the highest on his list. Since the other two had not yet occurred, this wasn’t particularly cognizant of the fact, but it remained true.

“Are you excited to start classes?” One student asked him during orientation.

Small talk was so tiring and so transparent. Chenle shrugged, flipping through the welcome folder as if something new and interesting might appear between the excessive exclamation points. “I’m more interested in finding the secret to eternal life. Do you think they keep the recipe in the library?”

His classmate clearly struggled not to frown, to keep his polite smile on his face, but he didn’t have an answer for Chenle’s question. He was as ignorant as the rest of them – Chenle could see right through their giddy schoolboy naivete. They had no idea of the game.

Behind him, a small, clear voice broke through the dreary monotony of the campus tour. “You probably need special permission to see it,” a boy said, “but if you’ve studied alchemy from a young age, you’re already following Norton’s footsteps.”

Chenle considered him. He was dressed in the uniform, was taller than half their class, but somehow managed to sink into the background like he was nothing more than a shadow. Chenle might not have noticed him at all had he not spoken up, genius or not.

“Have we missed our chance to start?” He asked.

The other boy considered him back. Chenle let him look and waited for his decision. Finally, he fell into step alongside Chenle, and their other classmates fell away, like they’d been warded away by some strange spell.

“It’s almost never too late to begin,” the boy said. “I’m Jisung. What are you looking for?”

Chenle didn’t know yet what he was looking for, but he decided Jisung would be the one to know whenever he found out.

In a show of faith, an extension of his friendship, he told him what he’d found in the woods.

Time was funny, here.

At Donghyuck’s old school, his routine was fixed. Each day was the same length, and they rolled by without his attention.

The sun touched his bedroom window, and Donghyuck was already awake. He slept in fits and starts. Rugby practices and late nights studying pulled at his physical and mental capacity, exhausting him. Even without the threat of a murderer lurking around corners, they were closing in on the end of term.

Stopping Yangyang had seemed so urgent, a few days ago, but…what were they supposed to do? They were teenagers.

The sun rose, illuminating the empty half of his room. When Donghyuck closed his eyes, he could see his former roommate there, laughing with Yangyang over something on his phone screen, Dejun’s sharp eyes peering over a book, amused, knowing. He would’ve known what to do, Donghyuck was sure.

Today was the day they were set to present their history project. It was certainly going to be a mess. With all the events of the past week, Donghyuck had thought their assignments might be pushed back, but Mr. Nakamoto insisted on a return to normalcy. As if Norton Academy had ever been normal.

Donghyuck dressed slowly, avoiding looking directly at Kunhang’s side of the room, like one glance would stir up the ghosts that thickened the air he so selfishly breathed. Dejun would have known what to do – he must have known everything. While Donghyuck…Donghyuck knew nothing at all.

Someone was still hiding things from him, or everything would line up. As it was, two murders ten years apart remained disconnected, with nothing tying them together except the motive. Donghyuck had to step back and look at it all with objectivity he didn’t possess, not when it was his head on the chopping block.

Someone was lying. How was he supposed to know who?

What had Dejun thought about, on his last day? Did he sit closer to Kunhang than he usually would have, or call his family to tell them he loved him? Do you know when your final time comes, do you get the chance to say goodbye?

Donghyuck skipped breakfast, his stomach in knots. He wasn’t sure he could chat with the others over cereal while his end loomed over his head. His hands prickled with hot, uneasy energy. He wondered if anyone could see the flames that rolled over his skin as he passed his classmates in the halls.

He wondered what would drive someone to kill their best friend.

His classes were silent. Or maybe it was the faint ringing in his ears that drowned out his surroundings.

In a daze, Donghyuck ducked into his history class moments before Mr. Nakamoto rose to call them to attention, inviting the first presentation group to the front of the room. Donghyuck slipped into his seat and rubbed his eyes hard enough to see specks of light dance across the inside of his eyelids. Nothing like presenting your class project with a potential murderer and a couple of pals.

He turned to say as much to Jeno, hoping to inspire some spark of life in them both, but when he opened his eyes he saw that the seat beside him was empty. Jeno hadn’t come to class.

It was possible he was late, but it was rare for Jeno to be absent at all.

Donghyuck craned his neck to catch Jaemin’s eye from across the room, but the other boy’s attention was fixed solely on Yangyang.

Yangyang kept his head down, his notebook laying open on his desk. To everyone, it appeared that he was studying up before their presentation. What if he was really going over the plans for his next— Donghyuck had to stop his brain there before he started sounding as unhinged as Jaemin.

Still, he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering until it was their turn.

Jeno had still not shown up.

After a fumbled introduction of their time period, which Donghyuck mashed together off of Jeno’s bullet points, Donghyuck dutifully launched into his own spiel. He had come to Norton on a scholarship, after all, and he wasn’t as horrible at academics as he’d been making himself appear to the faculty. Murder or not, he was a good student. He’d just been…distracted.

He wasn’t the only one.

He paused for the Jaemin to start his own speech, lowering his notes to gaze around the class. His eyes fell first on Mr. Nakamoto, expecting an encouraging smile, but found his attention elsewhere.

Yangyang shifted from foot to foot. He cleared his throat.

Jaemin had turned his face to the window. His eyes were glassy, holding the reflection of the sky and little else.

Donghyuck elbowed Jaemin in the side, hard. Whether Jaemin had been seeing something outside of this time and place or not, it was enough force to draw a nasty look in Donghyuck’s direction.

Jaemin shook himself a little and raised his notes. The only sign of his distraction was the twitch of his eyes toward the window again and again, the pull from somewhere, or something, else.

Donghyuck’s worry about confronting Yangyang after class disappeared with the boy, as he jolted out of his seat and ran from the room as soon as class finished.

Instead, Donghyuck walked with Jaemin, shouldering him down a quieter hallway. “What was that about?”

Jaemin rolled his eyes. “You’re so jumpy. I still did better than you.”

“It’s a group grade,” Donghyuck snapped. “I’m not talking about that—did you see something?”

“Oh.” Jaemin’s fidgeted with the strap of his bag, bunching the fabric between his fingers and letting it loose again. “Ah. Maybe.”

“Maybe’s enough. Tell me,” Donghyuck demanded.

“You’re so impatient,” Jaemin murmured. “Maybe you should see someone about your tendency toward confrontation, it might require therapy.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I want to talk to Jeno first,” Jaemin said.

Maybe if they were closer, or the situation in question wasn’t murder, Donghyuck would have cooed. They could have been cute, if Jaemin weren’t so infuriating.

“Fine,” Donghyuck said, “let’s go find Jeno.”

They couldn’t. He wasn’t in the dining hall or their dorm building. The grounds were empty from the light rain that had sprinkled on and off throughout the day.

“Locker rooms?” Donghyuck suggested.

Jaemin worried his lip between his teeth. “You know better than I do that they stink. Jeno uses scented candles, he’s not going to hang out in a sweaty locker room.”

“Well, he didn’t go home.”

Jaemin shook his head. “He lives far. And his car’s still here.”

“Maybe he just went for a walk.”

“Maybe,” Jaemin murmured. He sounded distant. Already, his eyes had grown glassy again.

Donghyuck patted his arm. It was an awkward, stilted gesture. Better than nothing. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

Jaemin hesitated. “I think I’m just tired.”

“I’ll believe you,” Donghyuck said, “I promise.”

He meant it. He didn’t have to try to read Jaemin’s elusive aura to know that Jaemin believed him, too.

“It was dark,” Jaemin said, lowering his voice as they passed through the halls again. Their shoes echoed across the empty space – everyone else had returned to class or lunch. “I couldn’t move. It felt like being trapped in a really small space, but I don’t think I was…”

“Dead?”

Jaemin grimaced at the word. “I’m sure it’s nothing. There were birds, too, I could hear them. I just thought…I’m just…”

Donghyuck glanced at him, then away again, quickly. It felt intrusive to watch Jaemin’s face contort with worry. “It’s okay to be worried about him.”

“Let me know if you find him?” Jaemin asked. “I’m going to keep looking. I’m sure he’s…fine.”

Donghyuck put on a smile. “I’ll let you know. Where could he have gone? It’s not like you can disappear around here. There’s nowhere to go.”

Instead of the dining hall, Donghyuck found Mark in the library.

He sat hunched under the carved names on the end of the bookshelf, rubbing the back of his neck as he stretched it side to side. His gaze remained on the book open in his lap the whole time. Mark’s work ethic was admirable, if somewhat pitiful.

Donghyuck cast a glance at the spot where Renjun’s initials were etched into the wood. He hadn’t seen him for a few days. He kept wishing that he would appear just around the corner, but he remained out of sight.

Maybe Renjun felt as scared as Donghyuck.

“What are you working on?” Donghyuck asked, keeping his voice low as he sat with his back to the wall. He had to pull his knees up to his chest to fit without disturbing Mark’s collection of notebooks and dusty tomes. 

Mark didn’t bother looking up, but his shoulders relaxed as Donghyuck settled, and if Donghyuck looked closely, he could see that his breath came a little easier.

“I’m running out of time,” Mark said.

Donghyuck didn’t need to ask for clarification. “What’s the rush? You still have half a year left here.”

Mark shook his head, but finally tore his gaze away from the page. He tilted his head back against the shelf and let his eyes fall shut. “Whatever’s going on, it’s because of me.”

“You’re pretty cool, Mark, but I don’t know how you’ve managed to make someone else’s death your fault.”

“It is my fault,” Mark said. “That’s the point. Guards are tied to us, we’re…useless without them.”

“I know, the guard has to die before the mage,” Donghyuck said. The words felt unnatural on his tongue, like he was speaking an entirely new language. “That’s why Hendery- Kunhang had to leave.”

Mark laughed quietly. The sound wasn’t as gentle and endearing as Donghyuck had come to find it before. “Nobody would bother trying to kill Kunhang. He’s weak.”

“Not like you?”

Mark opened his eyes, slow, and settled them on Donghyuck. His gaze was heavy. As much as Donghyuck ached to look away, he steeled himself and met it.

“Not like me,” Mark said. “Not like you.”

Donghyuck tried to swallow the question, but it pushed back his lips regardless. “I’m next?”

Mark held out his hand. Donghyuck took it.

When their palms met, Donghyuck’s entire body flushed with bright heat, light flashing behind his eyelids.

It had seemed unfair, that Donghyuck was made to protect Mark. For what? It seemed unequal.

But when they touched like this, Donghyuck felt alive. He could see everything, but none of it mattered except the boy in front of him, who gave him the spark to burn like this.

Mark leaned in, his grip on Donghyuck’s hand tight. “We’re no use to him dead.”

There was something dark in Mark’s eyes, an ancient rage that could have split the whole school into pieces. Donghyuck felt it in the air, in the pulsing energy that wrapped around his limbs and made him whole.

“Then I guess we can’t die,” he said.

An acceptable answer. Mark let go of him, stamping out the flames that licked Donghyuck’s skin.

Donghyuck picked up one of Mark’s notebooks, flipping through a few of the pages. “What can I do to help?”

Mark looked at his stacks of materials as if seeing them for the first time. “Maybe you can…you can go over the notes I’ve highlighted, see if anything makes sense to you. I think it’s half energy, half willpower. Committing to an Act like resurrection takes a lot of strength.”

Donghyuck flipped to the beginning of the notebook, ready to start on the first page. “Have you tried any of these?”

“Not for a few years,” Mark said. “I tried a few things, at his grave, but I wasn’t ready to…dig anything up.”

The words ran cold over Donghyuck. He knew Mark was trying to bring Renjun back from the dead, but the reality was more gruesome than he’d willingly thought about.

“I know what doesn’t work,” Mark said. “Sicheng tried, at his funeral. I remember that.”

“It didn't work,” Donghyuck said. Obviously.

“No. My cousins don’t have strong wills. All he managed was to stir his spirit.”

“That’s good.”

Mark frowned. “How is that good? He didn’t do it right.”

Donghyuck couldn't help but laugh – it was short, barking, and he covered his mouth with his hand seconds after. They probably wouldn’t be kicked out of the library for that, but Mark might kick him across the room, judging by the stormy expression brewing over his face.

“If he hadn’t done anything, we wouldn’t have Renjun now, would we?” Donghyuck pointed out. “Dead is dead. Renjun is…”

“Something else,” Mark finished. He pursed his lips, considering Donghyuck’s point. “I suppose.”

Donghyuck rolled his eyes. “Just say I’m right.”

“No thanks,” Mark said. He looked back down at his book. He had a way of ending a conversation without leaving room for questions. At first, Donghyuck had thought it was simply part of his personality, the power he held over a room. Now, he could see the cracks in Mark’s shields, how his control over his energy could shift the room.

It couldn’t effect Donghyuck now that he saw it, but he’d let Mark believe he still had control over their relationship. For now.

Time ticked on as he went through Mark’s carefully organized notes. Most of them were useless, just pure gibberish and antique thoughts. It was too complicated to make sense. Maybe that was the roadblock. Maybe it all just needed to be simpler.

Donghyuck rubbed his eyes and left them closed, taking a break as he let all the pieces fall loose across his mind.

Had anyone told Mark about Yangyang? Probably Jeno, at breakfast.

Donghyuck opened his eyes. “Did you see Jeno this morning?”

Mark frowned at the interruption, and shook his head. “No. Why?”

“He wasn’t in class,” Donghyuck said. “Jaemin hasn’t seen him either.”

“Did you look--”

“We looked everywhere.”

“Apparently not, if he’s still missing.”

For the first time, Donghyuck felt the same quiet worry that showed on Jaemin’s face. “Mark. What if he’s in trouble?”

On the other side of the bookshelf, at their usual table, Chenle and Jisung exchanged a look across their work. It wasn’t their fault that some people liked to talk about personal, private business in public spaces. If they overheard, it wasn’t necessarily spying.

But a faint sense of unease crept up their spines from the same understanding as Donghyuck expressed his concern.

Where could you go on the grounds of Norton Academy, where no one could find you?

There were some secrets, they thought, that ought to be shared.

When Jeno first stirred awake, he’d thought he was dead. Darkness surrounded him like a closed casket. Every breath was thick and stuffy, heat rolling through the air. All he could hear was the faint sound of a bird’s call.

Panic rose in his chest, but was quickly squashed again by sleep.

The second time Jeno woke up, there was light.

The sun streamed in through a high window on the wall in front of him. It lit the floor in front of him in a thin rectangle.

Several moments passed before Jeno could really register what had happened. His limbs ached. He struggled not to cry out as he shifted his body, stretching out his legs, and felt the pain of being hunched over for several hours. When he tried to move his arms, he found them twisted behind his body, his wrists tied together by something that scraped his skin raw as he moved. His arms were wrapped around a wooden beam that supported the weight of the roof.

What was this place.

He blinked sweat from his eyes, and still they stung. The room around him came into blurry focus.

It was small. _Rustic,_ his mother might say. What little furniture there was – a table shoved against one wall, a little wood burning stove – was old. Landscaping tools sat propped up in one corner. The rust on the edges of the shovel told him they had been there for years. None of this was particularly interesting.

But the walls were plastered in newspaper articles and strange drawings. They might have been monsters. Whatever they were, the strange shapes and angles made the tightness in Jeno’s chest worse.

By the door, a boy sat with his back against the wall, his face tilted up toward the ceiling. Running down his cheeks, twin tear tracks caught the dim light.

Jeno gasped, quiet. It was enough sound to stir his companion out of his thoughts.

Jeno might have strength on the other boy, but tied to the beam, he was all but powerless to fight against him if he approached with the knife.

But, Jeno didn’t want to die here. He didn’t want to die at all.

Jeno said, voice soft, “Please.”

The boy stared at him, mouth agape. Once he shook off his surprise, he stood and stepped forward. Jeno flinched back, and his classmate stuttered to a halt halfway across the room.

“No. Jeno,” Yangyang said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)   
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)


	12. pt. xii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> while fics can be used as escapism and relief, i want to remind you, if you have come this far, that this fic refers to death often and (SPOILER ?) this chapter contains violence. 
> 
> please take care of yourselves and consider waiting to read/not reading if these subjects are upsetting to you.
> 
> this reminder aside: the finale.

As much as Donghyuck trusted the pair of monster-hunters, he was wary of their instructions to dive into the woods surrounding the edge of Norton’s grounds to find some forgotten groundskeeper’s cottage. 

He’d been in the woods a few times, of course, following the tree line to Prophet Lake, but the easy walk could quickly give way to a hike for which Donghyuck had little experience. Still, he had done stranger things since arriving at Norton, than listening to a few friends ominously direct him to a cottage in the woods that apparently no one knew about.

Jaemin didn’t hold the same easy faith.

“How are we supposed to know Jeno’s there?” Jaemin asked.

Jisung frowned. “It feels like he is.”

Jaemin sighed with a heaviness that was awfully judgemental for someone with psychic visions.

“Trust us,” Chenle said, “we know a lot about this place that other people look over too easily. If someone is out to kill students here, they’ll know all the same things.”

“But--”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Donghyuck said. “Who knows what-- we should go.”

He didn’t want to say  _ before it’s too late,  _ but it hung off the edges of his teeth. He knew Jaemin could taste the urgency, too. It was sour.

“Let’s split up,” Mark said. “Donghyuck--”

“It’s better if you and Donghyuck aren’t in the same place at once,” Renjun interjected.

“Lovers quarrel?” Chenle asked, swearing seconds later as Jisung jabbed him in the side with his elbow.

Mark hesitated, but Donghyuck shook his head. “I agree. If anything happens to either of us, it’s better to be away from each other. If we’re together and I’m…”

“Incapacitated?” Jaemin offered, a little too cheerfully.

“Right,” Donghyuck said slowly, “thanks… If I’m ‘incapacitated,’ it’s for the best if you’re somewhere else, so you can’t get hurt either.”

“Say we pretend any of that makes sense,” Jaemin said, “can we go? I thought we were in a rush.”

Mark still looked unconvinced, so Donghyuck reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “Let’s both just come back in one piece, okay?”

Renjun curled his fingers over Mark’s shoulder. Donghyuck had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t going mad. It was the most he had seen them willingly touch each other. 

Renjun offered Donghyuck a brief smile. “Mark and I will come in from the village to look, you two approach straight from the grounds and we’ll probably meet in the middle.”

“What about them?” Donghyuck asked, nodding to Chenle and Jisung.

The pair exchanged a coded look and then looked to Renjun.

“We have to do something first,” Chenle said. 

Jaemin frowned. “Seriously? What?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jisung said, already backing away. “We’ll catch up!”

They hurried back toward the main building of Norton, its castle-like features looming up into the clear sky.

Somehow the cloudless day was more ominous than a rainy one would have been. Weather which matched the unease in Donghyuck’s chest would have given him something to blame it on, rather than waiting for the worst to happen.

  
  
  


Yangyang knelt on the floor beside Jeno, tilting a water bottle up to his lips. 

Jeno hadn’t realized just how thirsty he was, but the moment the water touched his mouth he leaned closer to drink it in gulps. When he’d finished, Yangyang set the bottle aside but didn’t move to stand.

“Is your head okay?” Yangyang asked. “I read you might get a headache.”

Jeno stared at him.

Yangyang seemed to be able to read the distress on his face. At least he wasn’t so far gone to think Jeno could sit here and accept his care without question. 

“I know you’re probably freaking out right now,” Yangyang said. He tried for a smile, but it wasn’t right, and he gave up after only a few seconds, the trembling tilt of his lips slipping away. “I swear you’re not going to get hurt. He promised.”

Jeno swallowed hard. His throat still felt so dry. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Who?”

“He said it was only fair, after what they did to Dejun,” Yangyang continued, “after he...I’m sure you’ll be fine once they pay for what they did. I know you’re not like them. I can see it.”

“Who said...like  _ who?” _

Yangyang stood and crossed to the door. Jeno’s breath caught as Yangyang opened it a crack, but he only looked outside for a moment before shoving it closed again. The hinges creaked.

Jeno’s head was swimming. More than that, it  _ hurt.  _ Yangyang wasn’t making any sense.

“Yangyang,” Jeno said, trying to make his voice as neutral as he could, “can you tell me what’s going on?”

“It sucks being left in the dark, right?”

Jeno nodded, slowly. 

“I know. My friends kept secrets from me, too. I definitely don’t understand everything, but I know they don’t deserve to die for their secrets. Dejun didn’t deserve to die.” Yangyang’s voice broke as he turned to face Jeno again. There was pity in his eyes, but there was something dark and gray that hung over his face like a veil. Jeno felt like he couldn’t look at him very long without his stomach turning.

“This is a...confusing time,” Jeno admitted, “I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to talk to you about it. That was...I think I let you down. I think we all let you down.”

Yangyang scoffed “Let me down? I appreciate that you care now, Jeno, but your friends have orchestrated this whole situation exactly as they wanted -- at least, that’s what they think. But they’re about to find out they don’t have as much control as they thought.”

His friends? Jeno’s head was pounding. 

Jaemin had said that Yangyang killed Dejun, although that didn’t make sense either. Jeno wanted to believe him, even against his instincts. “What did he-- what did they do?”

Yangyang no longer resembled the boy Jeno had known before, who wore a charming smile and burst with kind, lively energy. 

Now he was just a husk, standing in front of Jeno. Would this husk be Jeno’s end? It wasn’t what he had ever imagined the end would look.

Had Jaemin even realized he was gone? The devil on Jeno’s shoulder imagined Jaemin was too busy with Donghyuck to notice. The angel was silent.

“They killed him,” Yangyang said.

“Why?”

Yangyang frowned. “There are people, Jeno, that aren’t like us. They’re monsters. And they killed Dejun because he was too powerful, more powerful than them. They want to control the world, but people like Dejun are in the way, so they had to get rid of him and send Kunhang away before he could do anything to stop them.”

His ramblings unnerved Jeno, made his stomach turn. It was nonsense.

Jaemin was apparently psychic. Renjun was apparently dead. What did either of those things have to do with power?

“You said it sucks being kept in the dark,” Jeno said, “so you know I have no clue what you’re talking about, right?”

“Right,” Yangyang said after a moment, taking a few breaths. “Right, I know. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about any of that. I didn’t understand what was going on either until Mr. Nakamoto explained it to me. Once he talks to you and you read the book, it’ll all make sense, and you’ll understand why tonight had to be like this.”

Jeno sat up straighter, at the expense of pain shooting through his already aching joints. “Mr. Nakamoto? What does he have to do with any of this?”

  
  


The beam of the flashlight flitted over the undergrowth, there and then gone just before Donghyuck could catch sight of the ground in front of him. The second time he tripped on a tree root, he swore, loudly, and swung his arm out, only just brushing his fingers over the sleeve of Jaemin’s shirt.

“Can you be quiet?” Jaemin snapped.

“Do you think you can be a little less twitchy?” Donghyuck snapped back.

He realized too late that Jaemin’s hands were shaking, his grip on the flashlight loose. Donghyuck was scared. It had gotten dark and they still hadn’t located this forgotten cottage Jisung and Chenle had told them about. He didn’t want to find Jeno hurt, or worse, dead. 

But if Donghyuck was scared, Jaemin was terrified.

Jaemin Na had everything. Yet, if something happened to Jeno, none of it would be worth anything at all.

“Let me hold it,” Donghyuck said, not unkindly. He curled his fingers over Jaemin’s until he let go. 

The weight of the flashlight was unexpected, but filled Donghyuck with some sense of physical logic, something tangible to hold onto – none of this made any rational sense, but it was still happening, and he was here to see it through.

He pointed the beam a few feet in front of them and walked on until the glimpses of sky between the trees vanished, replaced by the bulky outline of a building. 

Donghyuck lifted the flashlight until the beam hit the dark wooden side of the house. 

Jaemin slapped his hand over the lens. His palm glowed red. 

Donghyuck could see the inner workings of his hand like his eyes had become X-Ray machines.

“What,” Jaemin hissed, grabbing the back of Donghyuck’s shirt and tugging him back behind a trunk of a tree, “are you doing?”

All at once, the urge to throttle Jaemin returned. This flashlight was pretty hefty – he had considered whacking Yangyang with it, but maybe he should get in a few practice swings first.

“Uh, I thought we were saving our friend from a murderer?”

“You’re just going to walk in? Is that your plan?” Jaemin asked. “What if he has a gun to his head?”

“Where the fuck would Yangyang get a gun?”

“Where did he get a  _ knife?  _ We don’t know what he’s capable of!”

Their whispered argument had gotten progressively louder, and as much as Donghyuck didn’t want to admit that Jaemin had a point about being sneakier, he had to press his palm over Jaemin’s mouth to shut him up. 

Jaemin stared back at him, his eyes wide in indignant horror.

It was even worse to admit Jaemin’s second valid point.

_ Where had Yangyang gotten the knife? _

Admittedly, Donghyuck had been running on instinct and assumptions. He hadn’t bothered holding space for the missing pieces.

Even if Yangyang had managed to return to the campus, to the exact bathroom he and Mark had pulled Kunhang into, where had he gotten the ancient, intricate knife that Jaemin described? 

A kitchen knife would have been one thing – a pocket knife, even, could have inflicted some kind of wounds. But Donghyuck didn’t have to see the body himself to understand the capabilities of peoples such as himself. A normal knife wouldn’t do it, it would’ve had to be a ceremonial weapon like Mark said. Like the story said.

If he could imagine the pieces all in front of himself, he would reach out, slotting them in place one by one. He could feel Jaemin’s eyes on him in the dark as he struggled to work it out. Renjun, Dejun – they were like him, just the first step to the ultimate hunting prize. They were like him.

Where had Yangyang gotten the knife?

Donghyuck clicked off the flashlight.

Was that Jaemin’s gaze he felt in the dark?

Donghyuck reached over and grabbed Jaemin’s wrist. “We need to get out of here.”

“But, Jeno—“

Donghyuck shook his head. His heart pounded double-time in his chest. “He’ll be fine. We have to leave  _ now.  _ Before he finds us.”

“Isn’t finding him the point?”

Donghyuck tugged on Jaemin’s arm, hard, stepping back toward the trees they had just fought through. “Not Yangyang. Jaemin, let’s go.  _ Please. _ ”

The word was serious enough to jolt Jaemin out of his disbelief.

“We should find Mark and—“ Jaemin cut himself off before he could utter Renjun’s name.

Even in their current situation, Donghyuck’s heart stuck in his throat, he almost rolled his eyes.

Jaemin stepped away from the tree to follow him, his hand finding the edge of Donghyuck’s coat.

The moon was all that lit their way. The beam from the flashlight was too strong not to give themselves away. Tree branches cast a stark shadow over Jaemin’s face, his eyes glinting like an animal’s.

Together, they stumbled a few feet away from the cottage.

They didn’t get far before he heard Jaemin’s breath hitch and felt the blow to the back of his head. In Donghyuck’s waning vision, the moon glowed red. And then it was dark.

  
  


When Donghyuck came to, he was tied to a chair in the center of a small, dim room. His head pounded painfully, his eyes aching as he blinked them open. The cottage, he realized, looked just as Chenle and Jisung had described.

He realized quickly that he was the only one waking up -- everyone else in the room was already in heated discussion.

He couldn’t feign surprise at seeing his History teacher standing over his friends, who were tied up on the floor, nor at seeing Yangyang. When everything had finally clicked, the realization was nauseating, and here it was playing out in front of him.

His stomach turned. Donghyuck swallowed hard to keep from vomiting. 

“It was you,” Jaemin whispered. There was a bruise blooming over his face, like someone had hit him hard. Donghyuck felt a little jealous “You were the one I saw. You...did you kill him? Did you make him do it?”

Yangyang frowned, looking to their teacher for his answer.

Mr. Nakamoto sighed. “As much as I love teaching, some of my students don’t know when to keep their mouths shut. Yangyang, will you please...?”

Yangyang bit his lip as he stepped behind Jaemin, reaching around to gag him with his tie. Jaemin’s eyes widened, his cheeks flushed with indignation.

Mr. Nakamoto smiled. “Thank you. See, now we can have a conversation. You know, I’ve never been one for monologuing, but we have some time to...well, kill.”

This was too much for Jeno, who spat out, “This is fucking ridiculous. You’re not a fucking supervillain, what’s wrong with you?”

Mr. Nakamoto’s smile faded again. More than upset or offended, he looked mildly annoyed. He nodded to Yangyang who, much more hesitant now, pulled Jeno’s own tie off his neck and gagged him with it as all.

Even with the fabric in his mouth, Jeno swore and kicked his legs out a few times.

Donghyuck turned away, and looked up at Mr. Nakamoto, meeting his gaze. He looked a little too pleased at seeing that he was awake. “What do you want from us?”

“You’ll all have to die,” Mr. Nakamoto said.

Yangyang’s breath hitched. “Wait-- you said only--”

“Don’t you want them to pay for what they did to Dejun, Yangyang?”

Yangyang fell silent. Donghyuck kept his eyes on their teacher, but his newly heightened senses tuned him in to Yangyang’s unease. 

Whatever Mr. Nakamoto had said to Yangyang before, it seemed like he was going back on his word. He wondered if the man standing in front of him knew that even young boys can’t swallow a broken promise. 

“Why don’t you go outside and keep an eye out for our last guest?” Mr. Nakamoto suggested.

Yangyang left in silence. Donghyuck could imagine how hard he was biting his tongue, because he, too, was having difficulty waiting. 

Mr. Nakamoto returned his attention to Donghyuck as the door clicked shut. His stare drowned out Jeno’s muffled protests. 

“What are you waiting for?” Donghyuck asked.

“You’re a tricky group,” Mr. Nakamoto said, “it’s better to have you all in one place. Less mistakes that way. No time to second guess things or let anyone escape.”

His logic was sound. If he killed Donghyuck now, Mark would feel it and would certainly be whisked away from Mr. Nakamoto’s reach. In one room, he could off them nice and neat, one after the other.

Donghyuck tried not to think about dying. It was something he’d thought he’d have to face much further in life. Now, facing death stood across from him, he realized he really, really didn’t want to go.

It took a lot of effort to remain calm and keep his thoughts in line. If they were going to get out of this, it would have to be up to him, before Mark got here.

“It’ll be me first, right?” Donghyuck asked. The rope around his wrists were tight, but maybe that was to his benefit. He just needed to keep Mr. Nakamoto talking.

Mr. Nakamoto regarded him with pity. “You know, I like you, Donghyuck. You’re pretty smart, you just fell in with the wrong crowd. If I’d pushed you more, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here. Maybe you’d be outside with Yangyang, instead.”

Donghyuck’s arms tingled with warmth. He hadn’t had the opportunity to practice controlling his energy, but so far he hadn’t given himself away either. “Oh, really?”

“I thought if I’d show you the truth, have you study it for yourself, you might be interested in helping me. But you’re not very dedicated, are you? Can’t even finish one extra-credit project by yourself?”

Donghyuck’s face flushed. Even though this man wanted to kill him, there was still something about being reprimanded by a figure of authority that set his heart pounding. 

“Well,” he said, “I liked you, too, you know. I thought you were a pretty good teacher. I thought maybe you actually cared about people like me.”

“What?” Mr. Nakamoto asked. “Kids who don’t have everything handed to them? I do care. I was you. That’s why we’re here.”

“We’re here because you’re a murderer,” Donghyuck snapped. As his heart rate spiked, his hands grew hotter. “Because you killed one of my classmates. Because you killed your friend, and who knows who else.”

Mr. Nakamoto’s expression slid off his face, replaced by a shuttered emptiness that made the room grow ten times colder.

Donghyuck stilled as Mr. Nakamoto slipped his hand into the front of his long coat, drawing out a long leather sheath that he held in both hands, his palms turned up toward the ceiling.

“Being a guardian comes with a price. I’ve paid mine,” Mr. Nakamoto said, slowly curling his fingers around the hilt of the knife. As he drew it out, Donghyuck clearly saw the weapon for the first time.

It was a sharp dagger, its blade dark and reflective. The hilt was deep red and adorned with etchings in some language Donghyuck had never seen before. It was very precise looking, all too shadowed to be any regular knife. 

This was a knife made for killing, and it had been very successful at its job. 

At first, the name ‘guardian’ rang familiar, a reference to himself and to Renjun, to Dejun. It was true -- there was a heavy price for their existence, a weight that could have flattened them if they relaxed too much.

But it dawned on Donghyuck, as he eyed his teacher and considered all the pieces, the puzzle that he had finally completed earlier as he and Jaemin crept through the woods. 

Mr. Nakamoto didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. While Donghyuck was made to protect Mark, Mr. Nakamoto was built to protect something else.

“The rebels, the ones who first killed them, the...people, the mages,” Donghyuck said, the words tumbling out of his mouth as fast as he recalled what Chenle and Jisung had once told him in the hall, slotting this information into Mark’s lore, his bedtime stories and family history. “You’re one of them, the hunters. You think that there’s something wrong with them-- with us? You think we’re wrong?”

“The Cult was established to protect the world from people like you,” Mr. Nakamoto murmured. He turned the knife and the blade caught the moonlight that beamed through the window. “I thought it was silly once, too, but I was wrong. It’s my duty.”

“You murdered your own friend because someone told you to?”

Mr. Nakamoto frowned. “I don’t know how you know about Renjun, but--”

Before he could finish, there was a sharp knock on the door. Mr. Nakamoto turned to the door and began to cross the room, holding the dagger at his side.

Donghyuck’s body pulsed with energy. If Yangyang had caught Mark, it would all be over. 

He took a few deep breaths and focused his energy on his hands again. While the flames that raced down his arms couldn’t be seen by many others, they burned just as hot, burning the ropes that bound him to ash. 

Mr. Nakamoto hadn’t quite had the time to take hold of the doorknob before Donghyuck leapt from the chair, sending it clattering to the ground. He focused on the time he sent Yangyang flying back against the wall, and dug his feet in as he raised his arms. 

He underestimated his own strength. The force of his energy, directed at his teacher, knocked the man against the door hard enough that something cracked. Donghyuck viciously hoped it was his bones.

Despite the blow, Mr. Nakamoto’s grip remained steady on the dagger. Groaning, he stood. He didn’t stay upright for long. 

The door flew open, knocking him back to the floor.

Mark stood on the other side of the threshold, eyes wide as he took in the room -- his friends tied up, his teacher on the ground with a knife, Donghyuck standing there with his aura flickering madly around him.

“What the--?”

He didn’t have time to ask. Mr. Nakamoto rocked his body forward, slashing at Mark’s legs and Mark stumbled back outside. The hunter followed him quickly. 

As Donghyuck stepped forward to run after them, Yangyang blocked the doorway, his face wet with tears. 

“Get out of the way,” Donghyuck snapped.

Yangyang moved. “Go. I’ll-- I’ll help them.”

The sound of blood rushing through his head had distracted Donghyuck from his friends still tied up on the other side of the room. He would have to trust Yangyang.

As Donghyuck rushed past him, Yangyang called after him, voice broken: “I’m sorry!”

He had to find Mark. 

He ran after the sound of the fight, tumbling back into the woods with only the moon to light his way. Earlier, he had been blinded by his fear, but now the same feeling, powered by anger and betrayal, fueled his abilities. His aura heightened his senses, guiding him through the forest.

When Dejun and Renjun had died, their counterparts had felt their agony and collapsed. While the first blow Donghyuck was harsh, it just made him burn hotter.

Donghyuck didn’t pause when he came across them, his heart racing as he registered Mr. Nakamoto hovering over Mark, who had fallen on his back and was scrabbling away from him in the dirt.

“I can’t kill you yet,” Mr. Nakamoto said. “But I’ll make you pay for the trouble later.”

The dagger was so sharp, it looked as if it could slice through the air. 

If Donghyuck had a bit more logic, he might have relied on his newfound abilities once more, but he had gotten in his fair share of fights before, and nothing spurred him on like seeing someone kicked while they were down.

His rationality left him. Donghyuck raced toward them, and grabbed at the knife.

His hands were shaking, his vision blurred by his own anger, and he missed. 

Mr. Nakamoto spun around. He smiled. “Finally. Both of you in one place. Let’s make it quick.”

This time, Donghyuck didn’t miss. 

As Mr. Nakamoto drove the dagger toward him, Donghyuck grabbed it again. He cried out as the blade sliced his palm, his fingers. He didn’t dare let go. If he let go he’d be dead.

“Stop!” Mark screamed. 

His voice washed over the pain. Donghyuck tried to focus on his aura instead, desperately trying to do something, anything, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how any of this worked, really, and he was just a boy.

Was this how Renjun felt, at the end?

Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they were going about it all the wrong way, and they were meant to stay here forever, with Renjun.

Maybe they were meant to die.

Mr. Nakamoto stumbled to the side as Mark jumped on his back, toppling them both back to the ground. 

Donghyuck’s blood slipped down his fingers, dripping onto the dirt, darkening it. He had to do something, fast, but all he could feel was pain and desperation. He couldn’t wrap his mind around anything else.

Mr. Nakamoto escaped Mark’s hold, rolling away. Instead of rising again, he pulled his arm back, met Donghyuck’s gaze, and threw the knife.

It flew through the air, its course true. 

_ This is it, _ Donghyuck thought.  _ Where is Renjun? _

But the knife fell before it reached him. The blade buried itself into the ground, sinking as if surrounded by quicksand. 

Mr. Nakamoto swore, crawling to it.

“Yuta.”

Dazed, Donghyuck blinked the stars from his eyes.

Sicheng stepped out from the trees, as if he had been there the whole time. The only thing that gave him away was the pain scrawled across his face, driven deep into his body. He would probably never be able to dig it out. 

_ Do you know now? Do you know what he did? _

Ten stood beside Sicheng, holding his arm. His amber aura shrouded them both in a thick layer. 

“It’s a little beneath you to attack a couple of kids,” the doctor said. In contrast to Sicheng, his outrage emanated from his whole body.

Donghyuck startled. Despite the blood dripping from his hands, his attention shifted to Mark. 

Although he looked like he was struggling to catch his breath, he was otherwise unharmed. Donghyuck crossed to him, offering his arm to steady him as he stood. 

Mark didn’t pull away, his hands hovering over Donghyuck’s ruined palms. His horror soured his aura. It rippled over Donghyuck in aching waves. 

Something in Donghyuck’s core urged him to keep his eyes on Mark, but he tore his attention back to the scene in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Nakamoto spit.

“What are you doing, Yuta?” Sicheng asked in return.

Mr. Nakamoto --  _ Yuta  _ \-- stood, pulling the dagger from the earth. “I thought you might have figured it out by now. It’s been  _ ten years,  _ hasn’t it?”

Sicheng unfolded one of his clenched fists in front of him. In his palm, lay a multicolored friendship bracelet woven from thread. “This was on my desk this morning. I thought...wasn’t he buried with it?”

Yuta stayed silent, eying the bracelet. A flash of surprise swept over his face, but he hid it quickly. Wherever it had come from, Yuta hadn’t expected to see it here.

“Some murderers take trophies, though, don’t they?” Sicheng murmured. 

Yuta scoffed. Although he stood like someone who wasn’t the least bit worried, his gaze darted around the trees, looking.

“Sometimes I think I see him,” Sicheng continued, his voice low, “I thought I was the only one being haunted. But maybe he was trying to show me what was happening all this time, and I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even want to believe this, when I saw it. Then Renjun sent them to get me.”

Yuta laughed. The sight of the bracelet and Sicheng’s appearance had startled him out of his confidence, but it sounded just as cruel as he intended. “Renjun’s dead.”

“He’s still here. I can feel him. He brought me proof. You killed him.”

Yuta smiled. “I can kill you, too.”

Donghyuck had been wrong to mistrust Ten. Apparently they were made of the same stuff. 

As Yuta darted in, swinging the dagger in a wide arc, Ten used his grip on Sicheng’s arm to pull him aside, taking his place. He just wasn’t fast enough.

Sicheng shouted as Yuta’s dagger glanced off his arm and sank between Ten’s ribs.

At this distance, the sound of the blade sinking into flesh was even worse than Donghyuck had heard as the same knife cut him. Now that he wasn’t blinded by his own pain, he could feel Sicheng’s panicked energy. He could feel the hurt pulse off Ten as he fell.

Donghyuck had never sensed strength from Sicheng, but his aura exploded in a forceful bow of light, pushing Yuta back a few meters. 

Ten gasped for air. His blood looked golden, mixing with his frantic energy, his sparkling aura scattered aimlessly over his skin. 

Sicheng bent over him, his hands pressing to the wound as he muttered incomprehensibly. 

Ten lifted his hand, his fingers grazed Sicheng’s cheek. 

Jeno slipped between the trees, stumbling over his feet as he hurried to help. “Let me.”

In the chaos, Donghyuck had forgotten that Yangyang had promised to free them. He wondered how much they had seen and heard. He wondered if Yuta felt outnumbered yet.

He must not have cared, if he did. His knuckles were white with a tight grip as he crossed the distance between himself and Sicheng again. 

“You’ve always been so weak,” Yuta spit out, “never able to fight your own battles. I thought I’d leave you alone, since you were so useless. But I made a mistake, didn’t I?”

“Maybe I wasn’t strong enough then,” Sicheng whispered, standing, “but now I only want to feel you die under my own hands.”

Yuta laughed -- a resounding, cold sound that echoed off the trees. “You’ve never had it in you.”

Sicheng surveyed him. The emptiness behind his gaze had been replaced by something dark, that flashed through the night, a quick arrow seeking its target. The ceremonial dagger in Yuta’s hand was dull in comparison.

Donghyuck held his breath, by instinct reaching out for the boys at his side. 

He found Mark, and curled his fingers into the sleeve of his shirt, just above his elbow. When he reached for Renjun, he found nothing but empty air.  _ Where was he? Why hadn’t he come?  _

He only noticed, then, the figure that approached Sicheng and Yuta from the side -- the dark shadows that fluttered around the edges of his vision. 

Ten was hurt -- his energy was dim and weak. Whatever he could’ve done to help Sicheng boost his own energy was far out of reach or reason now. But he was breathing. 

Jeno’s hands staunched the flow of blood from Ten’s side, and Donghyuck had the sense that he would live. 

But, he wondered, did Yuta know that Sicheng’s Guard was still breathing?

The hunter had adjusted his grip on the dagger, and closed the space between them. The tip of the blade glinted in the air a few inches from Sicheng’s stomach, but the mage showed no reaction to its threat.

Renjun came alongside him, his presence clouding the scene with a gray haze Donghyuck could barely see through. His heart pounded in his chest. What was he doing?

It happened all at once. Donghyuck was helpless but to watch, to be witness to the justice unfold.

“What do you say, Sicheng?” Yuta asked sweetly. “Are you ready to get out of the way now?”

Sicheng took a final long look at the man in front of him -- friend, teacher, hunter, a boy who was never supposed to let him down. 

Whether he felt it or not, Renjun had slipped his hand into his, and laced their fingers together -- his slight frame, the forever teenage boy, looking strong beside the shell of a man who was making a decision.

Finally, Sicheng said, “You’re right. You made a mistake.”

Sicheng laid his hand over Yuta’s, grasping the hilt of the dagger, and pulled him in. The blade entered his stomach with precision, only Yuta’s wide eyes betraying his shock before an explosion of shadow hid the scene from Donghyuck’s view. 

Renjun’s aura burst from his and Sicheng’s linked hands, the dark force that Donghyuck had once thought to be his deadness smothering them in a haze of smoke, and the wind filled with the sound of wings, beating hearts, crows bearing down on them. 

The next thing Donghyuck registered was Mark’s faint cry, the earth moving under his feet. 

He saw the form of a man on the ground. He understood that his teacher, the hunter, was dead. 

Sicheng turned, unharmed, and swayed toward Ten. 

Jeno relinquished Ten’s living, breathing body easily. 

Sicheng pulled the man to his chest, the fire in his eyes fading away again. 

Even justice couldn’t save everyone.

Maybe that was the lesson they had to learn. Donghyuck didn’t want to, but he still turned away from the scene and pulled Mark against his chest, though the older boy fought against his hold, pushing, crying.

Donghyuck tilted his face to the sky and found that the moon still hung in place by whatever unfair force governed the universe, though the stars blurred through his weeping eyes.

When the smoke and shadows cleared, Renjun was gone.

  
  
  
**Epilogue:**

The air was warm for late November. It left Donghyuck’s gut in knots, but it wasn’t the only part of the night that had him on edge.

“Alright, shift change!” Chenle called from down in the hole.

Donghyuck leaned over and gripped Chenle’s hand, hauling him out. “How much deeper do you think it is?”

“It can’t be that far,” Jaemin said, sighing, from Donghyuck’s right. He swore at Chenle as the younger boy threatened to wipe his dirty hands on Jaemin’s clean white shirt. It looked designer. 

Donghyuck felt the tingling sensation in his fingers that always accompanied the urge to mess Jaemin’s life up -- it would be so easy to push him in.

“Do you think you guys could help instead of commentating?” Jeno asked from below.

Donghyuck and Jaemin shared a brief look. 

“Rock paper scissors?” Jaemin suggested.

Donghyuck raised his hand, in full agreement. It was fair. 

Something wrapped around his ankle and squeezed. He screamed. 

His outburst was followed only by muffled laughter and Mark’s hurried shushes.

“Both of you get down here!” Mark whispered -- as loudly as he dared.

As much as Donghyuck loved pushing all the boys’ entitled buttons, this wasn’t the time. He could tease Jaemin about getting his designer jeans dirty later.

Donghyuck dropped into the grave, picking up Chenle’s abandoned shovel. The wooden handle dug painfully into his palms as he wrapped his hands around it. 

Although his skin had mostly healed over the past few weeks, the scabs still itched and the thin scar tissue ached in the cold. He gripped the handle tighter. Something about the pain reminded him why they were here, reminded him that it was all real. 

Here they were, standing in Renjun’s grave.

With a dignified sigh, Jaemin dropped into the hole as well. “Did we have to do this tonight? It’s going to rain. We’re going to be covered in mud.”

Donghyuck swung his shovel up to point the head toward Jaemin. “Don’t give me any ideas. We can bury you here, too.”

“Oh, maybe Renjun would enjoy the company,” Jeno said as he heaved himself up out of the hole. He sat at its edge, his legs still dangling into it. 

Jaemin, easily distracted by him, was already slipping an innocent expression over his face.

Mark shook his head, grumbling, “I wouldn’t do that to him.”

“Far too cruel,” Donghyuck agreed. He dug his shovel into the dirt. 

“I’ve known him longer than any of you,” Jaemin argued. His angelic face distorted in his displeasure. 

Donghyuck stifled a laugh.

When they hit something solid, their good humor dissolved. 

Jisung’s face peered over them into the grave. He looked a little nauseated, but curious. “We don’t have to open it, right?”

Mark’s face was just as green. Ten years was a long time for a body to sit in a box, underground, no matter whose it was. “Let’s just...try it like this first.”

For all Jaemin had protested working, he was the first to kneel down, clearing off the surface of the coffin. His lips pressed together in a firm line.

When Donghyuck looked up at Mark again, he saw his face tilted up to the night sky. The moon lit his skin with a blue glow. 

With his eyes closed, he almost looked like he was praying, although Donghyuck didn’t know exactly who or what Mark believed in.

Maybe he was asking his ancestors for guidance. But with the way Mark rubbed his fingers over the multicolored bracelet tied around his wrist, he was probably just wondering if Renjun would forgive him if he fucked this up.

He wouldn’t. Maybe they would get lucky and be haunted again.

Donghyuck smiled and reached out, taking Mark’s hand into his. “It’s time.”

The six of them stood around their grave, each linked to the one beside him by their hands. 

“It’s a little ritualistic,” Chenle said, pleased.

Jisung shushed him.

Donghyuck squeezed Mark’s hand. He hoped Mark knew that he was here now and still would be after tonight, no matter what happened. They had been made for each other.

But Donghyuck had chosen him as well. He wasn’t leaving.

If they succeeded, this would be the greatest Act Mark had ever done. If they failed, it would still drain a tremendous amount of energy from them both. Donghyuck had suggested they make up for it with the others’, was pleasantly surprised when they agreed.

Apart from Chenle, who was a little too excited, and Jisung who was similarly failing to disguise his quiet enthusiasm, they all grew very serious, focused.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Donghyuck said.

Mark took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

Donghyuck closed his eyes and thought of him.

He remembered his laughter, the clear sound of bells. His cold fingers sweeping over his arm, the shift in his eyes when he grew serious. The soft curl of his hair over the nape of his neck.

Donghyuck thought about making him smile more, being the reason for his laughter. It was intention, they agreed, it was willpower that could bring him back to them. 

It was love. And Donghyuck loved him. He hoped he loved him enough. 

His hands grew hot. There was buzzing all around his head, a swarm of bees that never landed. It seemed to last forever.

“This is cute. I wish I had a camera on me to take a picture.”

His voice was warm, warmer than Donghyuck could ever burn. 

Donghyuck didn’t think twice about opening his eyes, breaking the circle as he whipped around to face Renjun, who stood between a pair of granite angels. 

_ There you are,  _ Donghyuck thought, already in motion.  _ Don’t you ever leave again.  _

He didn’t think Renjun minded much as he tackled him to the neatly groomed grass, even if they were lying on top of the dead. They were used to the proximity.

In the back of Donghyuck’s mind, he registered that Renjun’s body was solid in a way that it had never quite felt before. He was warm. 

But, that wasn’t as important as squeezing him tight, knowing he was within reach and, even better, in his arms. 

From underneath him, muffled into his shoulder, Renjun said, “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Donghyuck breathed. He sat up, but didn’t lift himself very far off the other boy’s body. He held his bodyweight up with his hands on either side of Renjun’s shoulders, his fingers sinking into the dirt. “You’re here.”

“Here I am,” Renjun agreed. 

When their eyes met, heat crept up Donghyuck’s chest and stayed. As long as Renjun kept looking at him like that, kept breathing, everything would be all right. 

He couldn’t protest when Mark pulled him off Renjun -- he was smiling too hard -- and he rolled to the side to watch them.

Mark stared down at Renjun, and Renjun stared back.

“You did it,” Renjun said, his voice trembling, “it’s about fucking time.”

Mark pulled him to his feet, the shock in his eyes giving way to the giddy excitement, to the devotion that had always been there. He had no reason to hide his adoration anymore, not when the dead could come back to life.

A resurrection had occurred. 

Donghyuck had never expected this when he came to Norton. He had never expected to risk his life to meet these boys who had changed everything. 

He had been free falling for so long, he thought, but maybe now he was flying.

“So Mark’s the secret to eternal life?” Chenle mused. “Or is it all of us, together?”

Jisung considered him for a moment, brushing the dirt off his hands onto his shirt. He watched the five boys ahead of them tumble toward the exit of the graveyard, a chaotic force leaving behind an empty grave. 

“This time we beat death together,” Jisung said. “But there’s so much left to discover, isn’t there?”

Chenle nodded. “I guess we’ll have to keep looking.”

Jisung smiled and took his arm.

Together, they followed their friends, and left death behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love yuta i’m SORRY 
> 
> thank you everyone who has supported me & this fic over the past year, i've appreciated all your comments, theories, and the simple time it took you to read SO MUCH. if you've gotten this far, you are so strong, i love you, take care, maybe we'll meet again soon. 
> 
> if you'd like to reach me elsewhere to discuss:
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jpseudy)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jpseudy)
> 
> i'd love to hear from you :')
> 
> this is the end of this story, but maybe not the end of theirs.
> 
> <3<3<3


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